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THE STORY OF 
JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 




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>./<■ ,/ 



THE STORY 



OF 



John Frederic Oberlin 

BY 

AUGUSTUS FIELD BEARD 




THE PILGRIM PRESS 

BOSTON NEW YORK. CHICAGO 



'tt^S^V 



Copyright, 1909 
By Augustus F. Beard 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



LIBRARY of COi^GRESS 
Two Cooiei; Recoi^eC 

MAY 14 H»09 



PREFACE 

THE story of John Frederic Oberlin, 
written in French, was published in 
Strasburg in 1831, five years after his 
death. The author, D. E. Stoeber, a lawyer, a 
friend of Oberlin, was in his youth a student 
under his instruction and for several years a 
member of his household. In the preparation of 
his biography he had the assistance of Madame 
Rauscher, Oberlin's daughter, whose husband had 
succeeded Oberlin in his pastorate, with full ac- 
cess to his complete and careful diary of more 
than sixty years, and whatever writings were 
left by Oberlin. In his preface he says : '' I am 
going to relate his life with sincerity and truth. 
The family of Oberlin, to which I have been 
bound by fraternal friendship for nearly forty 
years, has been kind enough to confide numerous 
manuscripts of the illustrious deceased to me; 
other friends have furnished me notes ; my own 
remembrances have done the rest.'' 



PREFACE 

The result was an exhaustive compilation of 
facts which are well-nigh unreadable in form. 
A limited edition, intended for the parishes of 
Oberlin and the Alsatians who were then ac- 
quainted with his work in their mountain coun- 
try, was sold by subscription. It soon passed out 
of print; few copies are now in existence. 

Some minor biographies gleaned from this 
work were published in Germany, France, and 
England at about the same period, rather in the 
style of memoirs than in balanced biographies. 
None, I think, was given in what seems to me 
the necessary historical setting. These also have 
gone the way of this kind of literature for more 
than half a century. 

The perusal of Stoeber's Life of Oberlin, a 
copy of which I obtained in France, perhaps the 
only one in this country, led me to visit the scene 
of his labors. It was in the summer of 1886 
that I made my first study of the little village of 
Waldersbach in the mountains of the Vosges. 
Less than a hundred houses comprise it, promi- 
nent among which is the manse which Oberlin 
built and in which he lived. It was occupied at 
the time by the pastor whose accomplished wife 
is the granddaughter of Oberlin. Sixty years 
had then passed since Oberlin's death, but the 

vi 



PREFACE 

house remained almost entirely as he left it. 
His library was there, his manuscripts which 
were accessible, and much of his furniture as 
aforetime. The church near by was without 
change in appearance since he preached in it his 
last sermon. 

Sixteen years afterwards it was my privilege 
to repeat this visit, taking abundant time of sev- 
eral weeks to acquaint myself with the country 
and its local history, to tramp over its steeps and 
study its people, to trace if possible in the con- 
ditions of the present somewhat more of the 
secret of this notable life hidden away in the 
hills among a neglected peasantry, the grace of 
which now nearly fourscore years after his death 
has not lost its charm. 

I find it quite impossible to designate my 
indebtedness for what I have gleaned here and 
there, especially among the descendants of Ober- 
lin's former parishioners and in my personal 
visits and interviews with the descendants of his 
family. 

The Vie de J. F. Oberlin, Pasteur au Ban-de- 
la-Roche, par D. E. Stoeber, is the established 
authority for the facts of Oberlin's life and work 
which I have undertaken to retell. Le Ban-de- 
la-Roche, Notes Historiques et Souvenirs par 

vii 



PREFACE 

Mme. Ernest Roerich, has placed me under ob- 
ligations in the way of local history. 

It has seemed to me that a life so remarkably 
prophetic in its anticipations of many modern 
educational theories and methods, so entirely in 
advance of its day in the apprehension of the 
brotherhood of man and in the largeness of 
Christian fraternity and in his theories of social 
betterment and service, so unique and heroic in 
Christian consecration, with its lessons and in- 
spirations for an age in which the temptations 
are great to unduly exalt the material, should 
be recalled and remembered. As a study of sym- 
pathy with people in low conditions and of faith 
in their possibilities through the application of 
Christian truth exampled in a great life, the story 
of Oberlin must be significant. 

The fact, moreover, that a great institution 
of learning like Oberlin College bears and honors 
his name with the rich inheritance of his spirit, 
should add interest to the history of this remark- 
able man. 



vni 



INTRODUCTION 



1AM very glad to respond to Dr. Beard's 
request to add a word of introduction to his 
life of Oberlin. As president of the college 
that is proud to bear Oberlin's name and counts 
that name one of the richest parts of its inherit- 
ance, it is perhaps not unnatural that I should 
be asked to speak this introductory word ; and I 
do this all the more gladly because I have myself 
read the manuscript with great interest. 

But, quite aside from these personal connections, 
it is a pleasure to speak any word that may help at 
all to bring to others acquaintance with the great 
soul here portrayed ; for I am convinced that 
few lives deserve so well to be kept before the 
attention of men as the life of Oberlin. Just 
because Oberlin was, to use Dr. Beard's own 
words, *'a unique figure in missionary consecra- 
tion and service, a great man who lived a great 
life in isolation, who yet made himself felt beyond 
the boundaries of France, an educational and 
theological prophet, anticipating much modern 
thought in both directions," the record of his life 
cannot fail to be full of suggestion along many 

ix 



INTRODUCTION 

lines. It contains inspiration to good citizen- 
ship, to high public service, to truer living, to 
better teaching, to more devoted ministry. 

Just as I have hoped that I might believe that 
the college named after this man has been able 
to continue in its life something of his splendid 
qualities, and especially that it might not fail 
to achieve his own rare combination of breadth 
of view and passionate devotion to the cause of 
God and the needs of men, so I may wish for the 
readers of his life that they may feel the inspiring 
contagion of his spirit. 



HENRY CHURCHILL KING 



Oberlin College 

December 3, 1908 



CONTENTS 

Page 

I. Youth and Preparation i 

II. The Parishes in the Mountains of the 

VOSGES 21 

III. Educational Theories and Practise . . . 33 

IV. Making a Home 57 

V. A Road to Civilization 71 

VI. Call to America .......... 79 

VII. Bereavement and Renewed Consecration to 

Public Welfare 95 

VIII. During the French Revolution 1 11 

IX. Succeeding Years 135 

X. Personality and Characteristics 151 

XI. Aftermath 181 



XI 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



John Frederic Oberlin Frontispiece ^ 

Waldersbach (formerly Waldbach) ; Home and Church 

OF Oberlin * . . . . 36 ^ 

Home of Oberlin at Waldbach ....... 66 

FouDAY Church and Factory (One of Oberlin^s 
Charges) 122 



xiu 



I 

YOUTH AND PREPARATION 



John Frederic Oberlin 



YOUTH AND PREPARATION 
(1740-1767) 

JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN was born 
August 31, 1740, in Strasburg when it 
was a city of France. The OberHn family 
— one of the most prominent among the Protes- 
tants of the city — was marked by superior in- 
tellectual cultivation and an earnest religious 
faith. His father was a professor in the gym- 
nasium, a school preparatory to the university, 
and was highly esteemed as an educator; an 
elder brother who had already won distinction 
as a linguist was an honored professor in the 
university. An inscription on his tomb in the 
famous church of St. Thomas in Strasburg, by 
the side of the mausoleum of MarvShal Saxe, per- 
petuates the record of his high rank and fame 
as a scholar. His mother, a daughter of one of 
the professors of the university, was a woman 

3 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

of rare endowments, with a poetic spirit and 
musical gifts, exceptionally witty in conversation, 
who made a profound impression with her strong 
and happy character upon her children. The 
father was both the instructor and playmate of 
his children. At a place named Schiltigheim, 
where he owned a cottage and a few acres of 
land, and where the family passed their sum- 
mers, the villagers would often see the professor 
with an old drum acting as drill sergeant and 
drummer at the same time, putting the boys 
through military evolutions. Fritz — as he was 
always called, even into his later years — be- 
came passionately fond of these exercises, and 
the ideas of strictness, obedience, and discipline 
behind them remained with him and account for 
certain subsequent characteristics. 

As in the case of most teachers in all places 
everywhere, there was a small income and a 
large family. By necessity the strictest economy 
reigned in the household. Such straitened con- 
ditions are not pleasant, but they are often turned 
to advantage, and this was the experience of 
the Oberlin family. A few sous were given to 
each of the children weekly, to encourage them 
in habits of prudent calculation and to train them 
in the practise of benevolence. Often when the 

4 



YOUTH AND PREPARATION 

family exchequer ran unexpectedly low and bills 
to be paid came in, the children would be able 
to meet the emergency from their boxes of sav- 
ings. This spirit of economy, and at the same 
time of charity, together with the practise of keep- 
ing accurate accounts, took deep root in the boy's 
heart and went into the formation of his char- 
acter. Many incidents of his methods of econ- 
omy and his accompanying ideas of responsibility 
for charity are related of his boyhood and youth. 

In one of his unedited sermons a passage oc- 
curs with its side-light upon him in this early 
period of his life : " I remember in my youth 
passing through a crowded street and hearing 
a girl crying out in anger, ' Look, see that fine 
lady with the pearls around her neck! She 
bought them with the money my father was 
cheated out of. My father was shoemaker for 
her father and was not paid. Our fathers are 
dead; I am poor and wretched, but his daughter 
is dressed like a peacock.' '' Oberlin related this 
as an illustration of dishonesty in not meeting 
just obligations. 

His fellow students discovered in Oberlin this 
frugality and economy which they mistook for 
penuriousness, at the temporary cost of his 
personal popularity. One of them, while passing 

5 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

with him over a bridge in the city, determined 
to give his classmate a lesson, corrective of his 
supposed parsimony. Taking a coin from his 
pocket he hurled it into the water, saying, " S^e 
that, Fritz? '' There was no reply to this foolish 
performance, but later on, meeting a blind man, 
Oberlin gave him a coin such as the student had 
thrown away, simply saying to his companion, 
'' See?'' So early had he learned the lesson of 
regard for those who suffered in the hardships 
of life. 

In his university course the home influence 
revealed itself to indicate how he was developing 
his positiveness of character. While he was well 
endowed mentally, he was slow in memorizing — 
not an uncommon experience with minds which 
make their original channels rather than run into 
those of others. Determined at any cost to over- 
come what he considered a serious defect, he 
used the early morning hours in memory prac- 
tise, when his mind was fresh and retentive, and 
for fear of oversleeping mornings and thus 
losing his self-imposed discipline, he habitually 
placed pieces of wood in his bed to prevent him 
from sleeping too soundly. During his entire 
college course he was thus strict with himself, 
in many ways permitting no opportunity for im- 

6 



YOUTH AND PREPARATION 

provement to be lost. He could not satisfy him- 
self to take hold of a study without every effort 
to master it. Whatever the extra labors, what- 
ever denials of temporary pleasure, he counted 
as nothing when they stood between him and 
his purpose. 

His university studies were made under emi- 
nent professors, and from them he took his de- 
gree of Bachelor of Arts at the age of eighteen 
years, and when, five years later, he had won the 
degree of Doctor of Philosophy, he remained a 
student yet undecided as to his future vocation. 
He was not at this time looking forward to the 
pulpit. His mother was a regular attendant at 
the church services of Pastor Lorentz, whose 
theological views were considered so question- 
able that Fritz did not care to be among his 
hearers. To please his mother, however, he 
would accompany her to church, and this re- 
sulted in his becoming sympathetic with the 
pastor and a regular attendant upon his preach- 
ing. This Pastor Lorentz, who was also pro- 
fessor while Oberlin was a student in the uni- 
versity, was^ subsequently suspended by the 
ecclesiastical authorities for variance from their 
standards, and his classroom was deserted by 
the students. Oberlin regarded the action as un- 

7 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

just and championed the professor against the 
popular majority. At the hours of recitation 
formerly held by the professor Oberlin proceeded 
daily to his house, rang the bell, bowed gravely 
to the one who opened the door as a mark of 
his great and undiminished respect, and retired. 
The repetition of this amused the students and 
made him the subject of their good-natured 
banter. It was no question for him, however, 
what they thought or chose to do. He believed 
that his professor had been wronged, and for 
one, if the only one, he proposed to stand for 
him. Any coward can go with a majority. 
Oberlin was not a coward. 

By this time Oberlin had thought out for him- 
self his way into the gospel ministry and he soon 
'' took orders '' in the Lutheran Church. But he 
had settled the question of direction only, not 
yet of service, and when he was urged to take 
a pastoral charge he replied, " No, I am not 
qualified. To preach to others, I need more of 
the experience of life. Moreover, I do not wish 
to labor in some comfortable pastoral charge, like 
either of those suggested, where I can be at ease. 
The question is. Where can I be most useful ? " 
He was not attracted to the parishes which others 
were ready to seek and eager to seize. He would 

8 



YOUTH AND PREPARATION 

choose rather a work which would not be done 
unless he should do it. 

The thought which at this time appears to 
have been uppermost was the divinity of thor- 
ough preparedness. Meanwhile he found an op- 
portunity to assist both himself and his parents 
by acting as tutor to students who needed help 
over the hard places in their studies. In this 
way he proved himself to be '' apt to teach/^ 
and was much sought after. This led to his 
engagement as a private tutor in the family of 
the most eminent surgeon in Strasburg, Dr. 
Zeigenhagen. Oberlin saw at once the rare ad- 
vantages of this position, and without neglecting 
his specific duties as tutor eagerly devoted him- 
self to medical and surgical studies. He also 
took up the study of botany, which he pursued 
diligently. He remained here until he had made 
no small attainment in those studies. He did 
not know how he might use this knowledge, but 
he did realize that every mastery will sometime 
prove itself in unthought-of ways and be of 
service. 

From the time that Oberlin was twenty years 
of age — two years after his university gradu- 
ation — he began to keep a journal. In those 
days this was the unfailing repository of one's 

9 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

religious experiences. It was quite the custom 
for people of an introversive temperament and 
of severe and earnest life to commit their thoughts 
and feelings to paper, as few do now in this less 
subjective age. Oberlin's journal, still extant, 
contains the most manly resolutions to rule his 
life strongly and severely. '' I wish to force my- 
self,'' he writes, '' to conquer my natural inclina- 
tion, neither to eat nor drink more than necessary 
for my health. I wish to force myself to rule 
my anger, which so often gets the best of me. 
I wish to content myself with the least possible 
in the way of clothing and furniture, that I may 
always put aside some portion of my income for 
the poor, and to pay those who serve in such a 
way as will satisfy them, but in so far as possible 
to get on without unnecessary help.'' His '' act 
of consecration to God," dated January i, 1760, 
indicates the intensity of his feelings : — ''I am 
now convinced of Thy rights. I desire nothing 
more than to belong to the holy God. I give 
myself to Thee this day in the most solemn way. 
I consecrate all that I am and all I have, the facul- 
ties of my soul, the members of my body, my por- 
tion and my time." This was endorsed as follows : 
'' Renewed at Waldbach, January i, 1770." 
We may not regret the fact that self-dedication 

10 



YOUTH AND PREPARATION 

to God is no longer likely to take these ancient 
forms of devotion, but certainly there is great 
promise for future usefulness when a serious- 
minded youth in looking out upon life can find 
himself ready to take as truthful a view of his 
relationships to God and man as did this young 
student at twenty years of age. Nor was this 
a mere formal act of consecration on the part 
of Oberlin. His fervency of soul was without 
affectation. He had come to desire to devote 
himself, with full sincerity in the love of God, 
with his whole heart and soul and strength, to 
the service of his fellow men. His sympathy 
with humanity, his practicality, his humor, his 
cheerfulness of spirit, and his love and apprecia- 
tion of nature were sufficient to counteract any 
tendency toward an unnatural mannerism of 
piety. 

At this time Oberlin had been offered a chap- 
laincy in a French regiment and had accepted 
it. The military drills of his youth had left 
him with strong predilections for such a life, and 
he saw in it a prospect of peculiar usefulness, 
gratifying to his sense of duty in that it would 
enable him to influence and protect young men 
away from the restraining influences of home 
and subject to great temptations. In anticipa- 

II 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

tion of this and preparatory to the assumption 
of his duties he had resigned his tutorship and 
taken lodgings in the city, where he was pursuing 
a special course of reading. Particularly he was 
studying Voltaire, that he might be better able 
to combat the current unbelief in the army. 
This was his plan, but it was not God's purpose. 

On a cold February evening, while Oberlin 
was lying on his pallet with a distorted face 
and suffering terribly from the toothache, a mis- 
sionary from the Vosges Mountains entered the 
apartment. He sent a scrutinizing glance around, 
evidently struck with the poverty of the room, 
and at once introduced himself. 

'' Ah, Pastor Stuber,'' said Oberlin, '' welcome, 
Herr Pastor; but what can have brought you 
here to me ? ^^ 

"First of all, of course, the desire to make 
your acquaintance; then, because I have some 
business with you." 

'' You certainly surprise me, Herr Pastor. It 
must be some very urgent business that has 
brought you up to the third story to an un- 
known student such as I am.'' 

" Not so unknown as you suppose, Herr Ober- 
lin. I have learned about you. Your name has 
been mentioned to me as one who does not fol- 

12 



YOUTH AND PREPARATION 

low the beaten paths or routine of ministerial 
candidates. You have studied surgery and medi- 
cine. You have a knowledge of botany and 
medicinal herbs. Is not this so ? '' 

" In my leisure hours I paid some attention 
to botany ; Dr. Zeigenhagen has taught me 
bloodletting, and I have had some experience 
in the anatomical room.'^ 

Oberlin had raised himself upon his pallet and 
was listening with swollen cheek upon his hand. 

'' And you speak French? ^' 

'' A little, Herr Pastor.'' 

'^ Your brother, Jeremias, assures me that you 
speak it perfectly. This is very rare in Stras- 
burg. It is a most uncommon example among 
our candidates.'' 

" I tell you, my dear pastor, that my brother 
flatters me and spoils me. It is not a good thing 
in him, and I would much prefer that he would 
communicate to me some of his extensive scien- 
tific knowledge rather than encourage me in 
idleness." 

^' Indeed, my young friend, you must have a 
very agreeable brother; and yet as professor 
he is not understood to be very indulgent. Will 
you be kind enough to explain to me what this 
little pan means that I see there by your lamp ? " 

13 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

A deep blush ran over Oberlin's face. '' Pardon 
the cooking, Herr Pastor! I take my dinner 
with my parents, and I bring away some bread 
which my good mother gives me. At eight 
o'clock I put this little pan over my lamp, place 
my bread in it, with a little water and salt. Then 
I go on with my studies." 

'' You are my man,'' exclaimed Stuber, rising 
from his chair. 

''What is the matter, Herr Pastor? Do you 
think I am ridiculous in my habits ? '' 

" You live on the diet of Lacedaemon. Yes, 
you are my man." 

Oberlin was confused, not to say excited. He 
did not comprehend Stuber. 

Stuber answered, " I see you do not under- 
stand me; but I have got my man and I shall 
not let you go. I want you for the pastorship 
of Waldbach in the Ban-de-la-Roche." 

Oberlin, overwhelmed with surprise, offered all 
manner of objections, but Stuber in intense ear- 
nestness continued with excited voice: 

'' Yes, sir, you are my man. The Master you 
have to serve calls you by my voice. Listen; 
you must become pastor at Waldbach. In the 
name of the Master and Lord of us all I tell 
you this. There are a hundred poor and wretched 

14 



YOUTH AND PREPARATION 

families in want of the bread of life; four or 
five hundred to direct and to save. Yes, poor 
and wretched and friendless ! '' 

Oberlin's heart was in a tumult. This was 
just the field of labor he had wished — his ideal 
of missionary work; but there were difficulties in 
the way. He had been appointed chaplain to a 
regiment in the French Army called the '' Royal 
Alsace/' and his word of acceptance had just 
been given. Ought he to seek release from the 
post of duty, even supposing he might be released ? 
He frankly thought not. He urged this upon 
Stuber, saying, '' My dear brother in Christ, you 
honor me very much. But there are everywhere 
souls to save and direct, and in the regiments 
of the king more than elsewhere. The devil is 
close on the heels of these young, gay officers 
that display themselves so gracefully on the 
promenade and on parade; the devil is inces- 
santly ruining the soldiers in the taverns and 
in all manner of bad places. I assure you, my 
dear pastor, that as chaplain I am going to hunt 
Satan; besides, I have given my word; and 
furthermore, may I without offense ask you why 
you quit the Ban-de-la-Roche if the need is so 
great and there is so much good to be done 
there? ^' 

15 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

'' My young friend, I shall not leave the Ban- 
de-la-Roche until my place there is filled by such 
a man as you. I leave because my poor wife is 
dying far from medical aid. She cannot live 
there; the air is too severe for her." 

'' That alters the case/' said Oberlin, holding 
out his hand to Stuber. '' Your parish must then 
be in a very cold region.'^ 

'' I do not wish to exaggerate anything, my 
dear Oberlin. Six months of winter; at times 
the cold of the shores of the Baltic; a wind like 
ice sometimes comes down from the mountain 
tops above us; the sick and the dying are to be 
visited in remote, wild, solitary places among the 
forests. My wife often was almost dead with 
terror, supposing me lost in the snow-storms. It 
is like the passages of the Alps. Have you ever 
been in Switzerland ? " 

^^ Never, but I can easily im^agine it. But then 
I suppose your summers are fine and somewhat 
compensate for the rigors of the winter ? '^ 

" Four or five short months interrupted by 
winds and storms. Yes, the fragrant odors of 
some meadows perfume the summer air. and rye 
ripens well in good seasons." 

" And your parishioners, — are they well dis- 
posed?" 

i6 



YOUTH AND PREPARATION 

^^ Not too much so, not too much, I must say 
without calumniating them! There are some 
good souls there who are much attached to me; 
but they are all frightfully ignorant and untract- 
able and proud of their ignorance. It is an iron- 
headed people, a population of Cyclops. When 
I went there the schoolmaster was a swineherd 
in the summer ; in winter he taught the children 
in a miserable hut the little he knew. I have 
contended now these ten years with a rebellious 
material. I had left Waldbach for a few years 
of ministry in the delightful town of Barr. It 
was in the midst of vineyards, and my young 
family flourished like the vines in the warm sun, 
but when I heard that my successor had allowed 
the bark freighted with souls which I had com- 
mitted to his charge to drift, my heart bled. I 
returned again to Waldbach and laid hold of 
the rudder, but now I can hold it no longer. 
I have told you the reason why.^^ 

Oberlin was taking in the situation. He 
slowly lifted his large blue eyes and asked: 
'' Have you any material resources to aid the 
poor? You say most of them are extremely 
poor.'' 

'' My parishioners have nothing. I myself have 
very little. My wife's small fortune is already 

17 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

exhausted in relieving a little the general misery. 
Four districts even poorer than the mother parish 
are also to be served; not a single practicable 
road from village to village; deep mud holes 
among the cabins and huts ; the fruit, wild cher- 
ries, apples, and pears fit only for swine; and 
the inhabitants abandoned to the completest in- 
difiference have not the least concern to amelio- 
rate their condition. The Intendant of Alsace, 
who knows the British Islands, has told me that 
my parishioners and their pigs are a miniature 
Ireland. 

'' I have not told you all,'' continued Stuber. 
" I will come again at another time. I much fear, 
however, that you will answer me as two of 
your fellow candidates have already done : ' It 
is much pleasanter to live here in a good climate 
than up there among the rude people in that in- 
clement air of the Vosges.' '' 

" I do not say that, Herr Pastor; far from it. 
Every one of your words has knocked at the 
door of my heart like the blows of a hammer. 
What agony it is to find one's self thus in life 
at a dividing road without knowing which way 
to go! Ah, what a regret that I gave my 
word to accept the chaplaincy only a few days 
since!" 

i8 



YOUTH AND PREPARATION 

Stuber understood the struggle in Oberlin's 
heart. 

" I will not urge you now," he said. '' I will 
come to-morrow. We will see what can be done 
to release you from your engagement. I will 
come to-morrow; perhaps then I may get your 
answer." 

'' Indeed, it is not necessary to wait till to- 
morrow to ask God to enlighten us. We will 
appeal to him now to tell us on which side duty 
may be." 

Thereupon Stuber knelt on the tiles of the 
attic and prayed, while Oberlin with him implored 
the guidance of the Lord. The Spirit of God 
was with them. This poor upper room was very 
near to heaven, and when the two lifted their 
heads, in silence they joined hands. The struggle 
was over. It was settled that Oberlin would go 
to the mountains if the vacant position in the 
army could be satisfactorily filled. 

Conviction was action. There were not lack- 
ing those who were more than ready to take the 
attractive chaplaincy. Oberlin was honorably re- 
leased, and on March 30, 1767, in his twenty- 
seventh year, he arrived at Waldbach. 

There have been many battles in Strasburg. 
The Roman armies have fought there. The 

19 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

Germans have triumphed there. The tricolors 
of France in turn have waved in victory there; 
but the issues of the moral conflict between faith 
and sight, between the previous choice and the 
present call to a life of self-abnegation, made 
this decision a more glorious conquering than 
ever came to any hero of war. 



20 



II 

THE PARISHES IN THE MOUNTAINS 
OF THE VOSGES 



II 



THE PARISHES IN THE MOUNTAINS OF 
THE VOSGES 

(1584-1767) 

TO understand or appreciate the mission 
of Oberlin it is necessary to keep in 
sight certain facts of history. The dis- 
trict to which he went had been from early his- 
tory a disputed territory. Alsatia formed a part 
of Ancient Gaul, and as such was included in 
the Roman empire. The Romans held it for 
half a century, when it passed to the Franks. 
About the middle of the tenth century it became 
German. Later, in 1648, most of it was ceded 
to France, and subsequently nearly all which had 
remained German provinces were made over to 
France. 

Thus the '^ Ban-de-la-Roche '' was a French 
district, then German, then French again, and 
since 1871 is once more German. In each case 
until the last it was held as a fief. The people 

23 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

were vassals oppressed by wars and often by 
cruel lords. 

This district contains two parishes of about 
nine thousand acres, one Rothau, and the other 
consisting of the little villages of Waldbach, 
Wildersbach, Solbach, Bellefosse, Belmont, and 
Fouday. Waldbach, the home of Oberlin and the 
most nearly central, is about three thousand feet 
above the sea. The other villages are higher. 

While much of the history of this region of 
the Vosges is evidently legendary, there is au- 
thentic authority that in the fifteenth century 
there was a Roman Catholic priest directing the 
worship in the little village of Fouday, though 
the date of the beginning of the village is not 
given. In 1584 the Prince of Valence — the 
lord of the fief — sought to give a new start 
to several enterprises in the Ban which a pre- 
vious owner had undertaken but had failed to 
develop. A mine for copper was opened at 
Waldbach, and one for silver in the neighboring 
hamlet of Belmont, with furnaces and forges. 
The prince decided, since affairs were as bad 
as they could be, that a change of religion would 
be to the advantage of his fief, and concluded 
to introduce in the Ban in their behalf — and his 
own — the '' Reformed religion." 

24 



PARISHES IN MOUNTAINS OF VOSGES 

The Catholic priest at Fouday by this action 
was to lose his living. It was very poor, but so 
was he, and such as it was he wanted it. It 
was easier for him to exchange his Catholic gown 
for the pastoral garb of the '' Reformed '' than 
it was for him to move away. His convictions 
did not distress him either way, and as the 
ecclesiastical transition would be less embar- 
rassing than a removal, like the Vicar of Bray, 
he decided to stay. Remain he did in the 
capacity of Protestant pastor, as good as he was 
before and no better. We may be sure he did 
not greatly help the " Reformed religion ^' or any 
other. 

About the year 1600 the district had become, 
through a deadly epidemic, almost entirely de- 
populated, and as it was important to the min- 
ing interests that a new people should be found 
to make good the losses of the original inhab- 
itants, many Swiss Protestant people were in- 
duced to move into the hills. Refugees from 
bitter religious persecutions in France also sought 
shelter there. 

The new attempt at civilization in the Ban, 
however, went no further than the beginnings. 
Immediately — and almost an exact century after 
Luther posted his theses on the door at Witten- 

25 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

berg — the '' Thirty Years' War '' began. Start- 
ing as a struggle between Protestant and Cath- 
oHc princes in Germany, it involved almost all 
the states of the continent, and raged until it 
had wrought well-nigh universal wretchedness. 
Trades and industries perished. Its remorseless 
flames swept not only the palaces of the nobles 
in the cities but the hovels of the peasants also 
in remote places. 

The little villages of the Ban-de-la-Roche were 
overrun by hostile bands of soldiers, who made 
it impossible for the terrorized people to culti- 
vate their fields even in their poor way. They 
were in constant fear of attack and pillage. Often 
they were compelled to seek the depths of the 
forests for safety, living upon such herbs as they 
could find. 

Previous to these disastrous times a Protestant 
church and a manse had been built at Waldbach. 
The manse was so rude that the incumbent of 
it invariably called it '' the rat hole.'' It does 
not appear that his unattractive designation 
caused him to do anything to improve it. He 
remained at Waldbach during a part of the 
Thirty Years' War, and certain records which 
he left still exist. 

In 1647 the Ban found itself a second time 

26 



PARISHES IN MOUNTAINS OF VOSGES 

well-nigh depopulated, all the villages together 
numbering no more than ninety people, and when 
the war ended in 1648 the sufferings of the en- 
tire generation had been so great and the misery 
so extreme that the five villages of the Ban 
together had but forty-three survivors. 

A half century passed, and the country again 
recovered itself, until the district comprised nearly 
one hundred families ; but all this time it had been 
a hard battle for sheer existence. In the short 
summer season the people gathered barely enough 
food to sustain their impoverished life through 
the long winter, only to renew the struggle when 
the snows melted. With no trades and without 
industries other than the rudest agriculture, and 
with no intelligent cultivation of the soil for this, 
their roads mere by-paths, their streams without 
bridges, their food scanty and coarse, what could 
be looked for but hopeless and hapless lives? 

It would be incorrect indeed to leave the im- 
pression that nothing had been done to amelio- 
rate their sad condition. The churches at Fouday 
and Waldbach from time to time since 1626 had 
received as many as twelve different pastors, min- 
istering with long interruptions; but war and 
pestilence had destroyed most of their work. 
Some of them, moreover, had been poor shep- 

27 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

herds who had left no evidences of usefulness. 
The forms of religion had not been entirely lost 
but had been wholly neglected, and life was such 
a constant wrestle with poverty that nothing 
better than the conditions described could have 
been expected. 

To the poor people with such an inheritance 
of hard history and poor life, came in 1750 the 
forerunner of Oberlin, Pastor Jean Georges 
Stuber. He was twenty-eight years of age, a 
graduate of the University of Strasburg, with 
superior literary and scientific culture, and thor- 
oughly consecrated to his missionary work. He 
soon saw that nothing permanent could be hoped 
for in attempting to evangelize the existing igno- 
rance. Missionaries had preached to the people 
and failed. Stuber realized that righteousness 
needs knowledge and that ignorance is both un- 
certain and superstitious. He saw as none had 
before him, that there must be coworking of 
religion and education, the one for energy, the 
other for wisdom and permanence. His first 
work, therefore, was to establish schools, one in 
each little village. These were primitive enough, 
but they were beginnings. He made himself re- 
sponsible for expenses, and procured for the pupils 
books and paper and ink, visiting Strasburg from 

28 



PARISHES IN MOUNTAINS OF VOSGES 

time to time to solicit aid, and to interest the 
benevolent in this new form of missionary serv- 
ice. He was one of those, of whom there are 
few, who are blessed with the valuable gift of 
promoting charity in others. Let us be grate- 
ful for a succession of such philanthropic souls. 
The world is less selfish because of them. Both 
his tact and the courage in his solicitation come 
down to us in an illustration. The provost 
of the Ban-de-la-Roche resided in Strasburg. 
Stuber asked of him lumber enough to build a 
schoolhouse. This high personage, in rather a 
disheartening way, declined to contribute; but 
Stuber, by no means disconcerted by his positive 
refusal, said, " I trust your Excellency will not 
forbid me to call upon some charitably disposed 
people and solicit aid for such a needful work.^' 
''Not at all, not at all; call upon whom you 
please." '' Well,'^ replied Stuber, with his pleas- 
antest smile, " as your Excellency is well known 
for his charity and good deeds, I will begin 
here,'' holding out his hat. The nerve and the 
manner of it pleased the provost and ended in 
his contributing the whole amount of lumber for 
the school and in making an express condition 
that Stuber should dine with him every time he 
visited Strasburg. 

29 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

Stiiber, who had rare gifts in music, intro- 
duced in his Httle schools musical instruction. 
For a generation there had been no singing; no 
one knew how to sing correctly. There was not 
a Bible or a Testament in the entire district. 
He secured copies of these, and edited a cate- 
chism, to bring out the more vital Christian 
teachings. He repaired the church building at 
Waldbach and began a public library with a 
hundred volumes. 

Thus for ten years in two pastorates, from 
1750 to 1754, and again from 1760 to 1767, 
Stuber grappled with the difficulties of this neg- 
lected field, attacking the ignorance and the 
poverty of the people in these ways, but not 
without encountering much opposition. Fixed 
in their habits, most of the people did not know 
enough to wish for improvement and few had 
any desire to be made better. 

Ten years were too few to overcome the in- 
ertia of a long-degraded heredity and to change 
the habits of feeling, thought, and action which 
had been handed down for many generations. 
Doubtless it often seemed a long time to this 
man who, single-handed and alone, was carrying 
the heavy burden. His failing health, and the 
more rapid decline of the health of his wife, at 

30 



PARISHES IN MOUNTAINS OF VOSGES 

last compelled him to leave this laborious service 
without having made much impression. But he 
had put too much of his life into this wretched 
charge now to remit his interest when he left 
it to assume a pastorate in Strasburg. He could 
not endure the thought that the work which he 
had begun might be lost or that it should fall 
into unworthy hands. His problem was, '' Can 
any one be found willing to take up the task of 
bringing redemption to these rude people and 
to endure the hardness of life which this in- 
volves ? " It was with this question that he had 
gone to Oberlin, and it was with this history 
of bitter life on the part of the people and of 
his almost hopeless endeavor that Oberlin in the 
strength of his early manhood had answered him, 
saying, " I will go/' 



31 



1 



Ill 

EDUCATIONAL THEORIES AND 
PRACTISE 



Ill 

EDUCATIONAL THEORIES AND 
PRACTISE 

(1767-1771) 

IN the little village which was to be his home 
and from which he was to reach out to the 
four other parishes in his charge, Oberlin 
installed himself. We have seen how the work 
was represented to him by Stuber. Now that 
he acquainted himself with it, what did he find 
and how did it appear to him? 

Some have thought that his biographers under 
the spell of his remarkable personality have un- 
consciously darkened the history and conditions 
of this forlorn field, as painters shade their pic- 
tures in order that the principal figures may 
better stand out from the background. It was 
soon evident enough, however, that Stuber, in his 
relation to Oberlin of the condition of things, did 
not overstate the severe and difficult conditions. 
The country was indeed in extremest poverty. 

35 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

The people of the fief were compelled to do feudal 
duty in severe forms. The provosts and their 
subalterns were so exacting in their demands that 
life was a practical slavery. One form of the serv- 
ice required was to bring coal to the furnaces at 
Waldbach, and to carry over the rugged moun- 
tain ways the iron from the mines to the forges 
at Rothau. The poverty of some was so extreme 
that one presentable suit of clothes was made to 
answer for diflferent members of the family and 
was worn alternately, and one pair of sabots had to 
serve for all the household. Tax dues far beyond 
their ability accumulated year by year. Oberlin 
writes : " Money-gatherers are going about say- 
ing, ' Pay up, pay up,' and it is difficult to save 
them from the hands of the sheriff. Whoever 
secures enough bread for a whole year is consid- 
ered very rich.'' Again, he records in his journal 
the joy of a poor widow upon receiving a cent 
which he had feared to offer her lest he should 
offend her, and further on adds, '' Oh, I wish that 
he who has not learned to save, to be content with 
little, to limit himself to simple food and clothing, 
to refuse all frivolous things, might learn and 
know the life of our poor Ban-de-la- Roche. It 
is difficult for those in comfort to understand what 
extreme poverty means." 

36 



1 




\^ 

O 

o 
u 



o 









< 

23 






EDUCATIONAL THEORIES AND PRACTISE 

His diary, which is full, does not anywhere, 
however, reveal any discouragement. He was 
afflicted by the misery of the people, but he was 
wont to get mental relief from the scenes of it 
by turning to nature about him. The moun- 
tains uplifted his spirit. He loved the fields and 
meadows of the valleys with the streams cours- 
ing through them. They helped him to postpone 
for the time his thoughts of the surrounding 
human sorrow. His botany paid him rich re- 
wards for the investment of his past study. The 
flora of the fields, varied and rich, greatly in- 
terested him. Of one of his excursions as winter 
approached he v/rites : '' Nature was of mar- 
velous beauty. The valleys and hills were 
of a dazzling whiteness. The pine-trees were' 
covered with hoar frost. The frozen snow 
reflected everywhere brilliantly the rays of the 
sun.'' 

Again he refers to the satisfaction which came 
to him in this communion with nature — '' with 
the hills lighted up by the sun, variegated by the 
ever-changing shadows of the trees.'' With all 
his tendency to self-introspection there could be 
nothing morbid in his mind, which thus delighted 
in nature studies and in the glory which the 
world puts on. 

37 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

Of the ancient parsonage into which he came 
he writes: '' I was Hving in an old house where 
I endured continual embarrassments and losses 
both by the rats and the rain, which went through 
everything, but I would not think of a better 
one until the schools are comfortably lodged." 

It did not take a long time for him to grasp 
the situation before him. No temporary amelio- 
ration would do; no patchwork upon existing 
conditions. It was not worth while to put new 
wine into the old bottles. The reformation must 
be absolutely radical. Long-established evils to 
which the people were born and which had been 
strengthened and confirmed by generations of 
ignorance called for entirely new environments 
if there was to be any worthy life. But Oberlin 
did not make the mistake, too common in our 
day, that a mere change in material conditions 
for the better, even if this could be effected, 
would insure a permanent betterment of the 
people. The foundation hope for better envi- 
ronments that would stay must rest in the fact 
that a better people would work them out and 
maintain them. The necessary changes in 
methods and manners of life must begin in the 
character of the people or they would prove to 
be unreal and temporary. Character alone would 

38 



EDUCATIONAL THEORIES AND PRACTISE 

remove the miseries which afflicted them. As this 
should be understood and accepted their material 
conditions would improve, and these in turn 
would react and become great factors to facili- 
tate the life impulse and the qualities which had 
made for their improvement. This was Oberlin's 
social theory, and a true one. To remove evil 
is not enough. There must be a moral redemp- 
tion and moral power for any permanent wel- 
fare. Oberlin clearly saw that this meant cease- 
less patience, and a courage which would hold 
on through whatever disappointments and over 
whatever oppositions and never falter. No short- 
lived enthusiasms or temporary purposes were 
worth consideration. There must be a faith that 
would not surrender, and there must be full time 
for faith's fruitage in the internal character of 
the people. 

Oberlin had gone to his people first of all as 
a pastor, for which office he had particularly pre- 
pared himself. The spiritual welfare of his flock 
naturally was his supreme consideration, but he 
saw at once how little mere preaching and evan- 
gelizing could accomplish in this material and 
moral desolation. True, his work was to save 
souls. But he must do it by saving men and 
women. More; this work of salvation must 

39 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

largely be wrought out before souls became men 
and women. This was quite a new missionary idea. 
Aforetime, the missionary way was to preach the 
truths of the Bible to grown-up people and to urge 
their acceptance ; to gather churches, and to min- 
ister to them. It came to Oberlin that taking the 
gospel as the power of God unto salvation in the 
ignorance about him was not nearly so simple 
a matter as this. He saw clearly the connection 
between physical misery and moral degradation. 
He could not deal with those who were bearing 
in themselves the penalties of the lack of knowl- 
edge as if they were disembodied spirits. They 
must be taught how to meet their physical desti- 
tution and their mental destitution also. They 
must be ministered to as those who have a life 
to work out now, as well as an expectant life 
in a world to come. His mission was not simply 
to rescue here and there a vacant mind, nor to 
'' throw out the life-line '^ to shipwrecked souls, 
but the kingdom of God is '' as if a man should 
cast seed upon the earth,'' and it should grow by 
all kinds of help, '' he knoweth not how,'' but not 
without long watching and care and waiting. In 
this way Oberlin broadened the missionary in- 
terpretation of salvation with the beginning of 
his ministry. 

40 



EDUCATIONAL THEORIES AND PRACTISE 

He would therefore place the first emphasis 
upon schools. To multiply Christian schools 
means to multiply Christian men and women; 
and where these grow in numbers schools are 
sure to develop in scope and quality, and 
preachers and teachers will not fail to be made 
ready for the growing kingdom. First, then, in 
the order both of time and importance, there 
must be schools; not only indispensable for the 
present, but also the only guaranty of the future. 
But how to get these was the question. Stuber 
had built one little schoolhouse before Oberlin 
came — a single, poor, one-room affair — for five 
villages miles apart. This was but little better 
than nothing at the first, and now was in a 
ruinous state. 

Oberlin began with a scheme of education 
which staggered the faith of his friends. It 
asked, they thought, for too much to expect 
realization. There must be teachers thoroughly 
competent and earnest. For this the people them- 
selves could do absolutely nothing, even if they 
could have appreciated such a use of funds when 
they were in great material destitution. Any 
attempt to add to their burdens was sure to be 
resisted, nor could they understand why schools 
should be regarded as a first necessity. As 

41 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

Oberlin's entire salary was only about $200 a 
year, on which he was to live, it was evident that 
he could not erect many schoolhouses from his 
personal treasury. Nevertheless he decided — 
to use his own words — '' it must be done," and 
he proceeded to the doing without delay. He 
purchased the ground and drew the plans of a 
sufficiently commodious schoolhouse. Faith and 
works joined hands. He prayed to God and he 
prayed to men. Stuber was in Strasburg among 
influential friends, and Oberlin was not without 
friends there, and together they did not fail to 
make their wants known. A loan of sixteen 
hundred francs — about $320 — was obtained. 
Oberlin made himself personally responsible for 
it, relying upon the assurance of two thousand 
francs in the future — $400 — promised by a 
benevolent lady in Strasburg. 

So far well, but this was not very far. His 
disturbed parishioners arose with an emphatic 
'' No ! '' They opposed the entire scheme. They 
said, '' Before the building is completed we shall 
be taxed for it, and we are taxed to death now. 
We will not submit to another tax." 

'^ You shall not be taxed for it/' said Oberlin. 

^^ But we will have to keep it in repair," they 
replied, '' and we don't want it and we will not 

42 



EDUCATIONAL THEORIES AND PRACTISE 

have it We know what it means. It means 
burdens imposed upon us." 

The unruly spirits in the Ban were exceed- 
ingly active, and there are always unruly spirits 
everywhere if they can get half a chance to make 
trouble. Now they had their opportunity with 
Oberlin and they used it. They had already 
begun to criticize his preaching. He was too 
direct. He was too much in earnest. He was 
too radical. He was forever suggesting changes, 
and they protested against his innovations. The 
more headstrong decided to attack him person- 
ally. '' Our pastor is too fiery,'' they said ; '' we 
will cool him off. We will put him under the 
spout when he passes by.'' Oberlin heard of the 
threat and lost no time in going to the head- 
quarters of the opposers. '' Why, friends, if you 
expect to wet me you do not know my horse. 
But if you really wish to do it, to make the thing 
easier for you I will leave my horse at home, 
and go on foot after this to give you a chance." 
After this interview they hesitated, and decided 
to rest with the threat. 

At another time Oberlin received information 
that certain ones opposed to his ideas had a plan 
to waylay him and inflict personal castigation. 
This would intimidate him and prevent his future 

43 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

interferences. Learning where the malcontents 
had come together, he immediately appeared to 
them. '' Here I am, my friends, without fear. 
I am acquainted with your design and that you 
propose to chastise me. Very well, if I am cul- 
pable punish me for it. It is better that I should 
deliver myself into your hands than that you 
should be guilty of an ambuscade to do this." 
As in other cases, this ended by the peasants in 
sheer shame yielding their intention. 

Still, the determined and almost violent oppo- 
sition to the proposed schoolhouse could not 
be overcome. It assumed such proportion that 
Oberlin and Stuber, helping him from Strasburg, 
bound themselves by a written contract that '' we 
will build a schoolhouse and it shall not cost 
the inhabitants anything, either in grain or in 
labor.'' This agreement brought a final though 
not a cheerful consent. 

" It was inexpressible joy to me,'' wrote Ober- 
lin, " when I saw from week to week the struc- 
ture going up." When it was finished, a debt 
of one thousand francs — equal to his entire 
year's salary — rested on Oberlin, which it took 
him several years with his strictest economy to 
pay. 

This building was no sooner completed than 

44 



EDUCATIONAL THEORIES AND PRACTISE 

he immediately began another at Bellefosse, a 
few miles away. Here there was less opposi- 
tion, as he was now gradually gaining the con- 
fidence of the people. The construction of this 
building occupied a year and a half, and left 
an additional personal debt of another thousand 
francs on Oberlin, which, like the former one, 
was paid at length by his continuous savings. 
In a few years the inhabitants of the other 
villages came forward voluntarily and took the 
cost and care upon themselves of building 
their own schoolhouses, until each village had 
its own. 

These secured, Oberlin bent his energies to 
find well-qualified teachers who would carry out 
his ideas of an education, fitted for the special 
and peculiar experience of the class of people 
under his charge. He well understood that the 
teacher makes the school, but teachers could not 
be constructed like schoolhouses. True teachers, 
like poets, are born, not made. While he was 
busy in securing them — and he did secure them 
— he was also planning and drawing up his 
courses of instruction. Some idea of the start- 
ing-point of ignorance is seen in the quota- 
tion, '' The pupil must learn to count as far as 
a thousand, and add and subtract as far as a 

45 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

hundred.'' The plan of instruction which he 
wrote out and prescribed embraced a number of 
years. It began with the infant school, proceeded 
through primary, grammar, and advanced grades, 
with each grade subdivided and classified accord- 
ing to the pupils' attainments. 

His '' infant schools " were probably the first 
ever established, and in many of his ideas and 
methods in his instruction of industrial train- 
ing, both manual and agricultural, he anticipated 
Pestalozzi by forty years, and Froebel by full 
seventy years in many of his educational theo- 
ries. It has been said that Froebel's best thought 
was not in relation to the kindergarten, but in 
relation to the education of adults, to make the 
whole community a unit of intellectual and moral 
cooperation. Oberlin not only announced this 
theory, but he was putting it into practical efifect, 
amid untold oppositions, many years before Froe- 
bel was born. His infant schools practised 
modern kindergarten methods. Observation and 
experience convinced him that even from the 
cradle children are capable of being taught to 
distinguish between right and wrong and of 
being trained to habits of subordination and 
industry; and in conjunction with his wife he 
secured '' conductrices " for each hamlet, en- 

46 



EDUCATIONAL THEORIES AND PRACTISE 

gaged schoolrooms for them, and became per- 
sonally responsible for their salaries. 

Instruction in these schools was mingled with 
amusement, and while enough discipline was in- 
troduced to instil habits of obedience and atten- 
tion, a degree of liberty was allowed which left 
the infant mind the freedom of individuality. 
During school hours the children were formed 
in great circles. Two women were employed, 
one to direct the handicraft, and the other to 
entertain and instruct. The children of two and 
three years only were to sit quietly by at inter- 
vals, while those of four or six years were taught 
to knit and spin and sew; and when they were 
beginning to be weary, they were shown colored 
pictures relating to Scriptural subjects or natural 
history and were to recite after the teacher the 
explanations which she gave. In addition, she 
taught them to sing songs and hymns and gave 
them bits of useful information in children's 
stories. In this way their employments were 
'' varied as much as possible,'' '' care being taken 
to keep them constantly alert, occupied, and never 
permitting them to speak a word of patois." 
When they arrived at the proper age, the chil- 
dren were ready for the primary grades in the 
public school. 

47 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN . 

Here again the originality of Oberlin is mani- 
fest. He introduced in these grades, and indeed 
in all grades, a nicely adjusted scheme of '' self- 
government/' Monitors were to be chosen by 
the pupils from among themselves to observe 
violations of good manners, disobedience, idle- 
ness, or any departures from good conduct. 
These monitors were to serve for given periods 
of time, when there would be new elections. The 
pupils also were to choose juries and judges, 
before whom all cases of discipline were to be 
brought for judgment. This was more than a 
century ago, when in schools the accepted theory 
of discipline meant authority of command and 
the penalty of the rod. 

In the primary grades the pupils were to learn 
to '' spell without a book, to pronounce correctly, 
and the first ideas of morality and religion." 
They were to advance to arithmetic '' by easy 
lessons in addition, multiplication, subtraction^ 
and division, upon the blackboard." Through 
intermediate studies and into what may be called 
the grammar grade were exercises '' in reading 
and writing, in geography with maps, the study of 
different peoples, their customs, governments, and 
religions, arithmetic, grammar, and vocal music.'* 
In the higher grades were ^'natural history, 

+8 



EDUCATIONAL THEORIES AND PRACTISE 

botany, familiarity with plants, book-keeping, his- 
tory, astronomy, physics, translations from Ger- 
man into French, the rules of health, first lessons 
in geometry, pen-making, drawing, and use of 
colors/' Oberlin knew very well that the sciences 
could not be taught in his schools beyond the 
first elements, but he was confident that he could 
aid the habit of observation and study in the 
science of common things. In his instructions 
to the teachers the pupils were to learn all that 
could be taught them '' relating to the seasons and 
the weather, to the productions of the earth, to 
animals, to men and their food, their clothing and 
their houses/' Concerning property, they were 
^' to learn about inheritances, loans, debts, interest, 
processes of law, magistrates, and the common- 
wealth/' Our nature studies and civil govern- 
ment studies as they are now taught were pretty 
well covered in Oberlin's program. The princi- 
ples of agriculture were also in his curriculum. 
Added to this, which we should scarcely expect to 
find in such conditions, was instruction in esthetics. 
Oberlin purposed to interest these young minds in 
what is beautiful. They were " to draw from na- 
ture and to color their drawings." They were to 
be taught '' to observe the forms and colors of 
nature and to draw rocks, trees, flowers, and 
4 49 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

animals from the things themselves." He fur- 
nished from his own purse paper, colors, and pen- 
cils for this. From his printed notes for teachers 
I quote : '' Nearly all pupils wish to paint with 
only brilliant colors. Nevertheless, there are few 
brilliant colors in nature. Rocks, the trunks of 
trees, houses, earth, furniture, utensils, have not 
brilliant colors. If there are some students wise 
enough to take nature for their model and use 
quiet colors, I beg gentlemen preceptors to send 
me their books of drawing that I may examine 
them.'' Thus he carefully superintended every- 
thing. His schedule was not simply a program; 
it was to be carried out. He watched and di- 
rected it. His personal attention to details is 
observable in every undertaking, and he placed 
the greatest importance upon these in educa- 
tion. With him there was no confidence in gen- 
eral oversight which was careless of particular 
duties. Upon the proper knowledge and ad- 
justment of details general principles work, and 
he was willing to give time and thought to 
the things that came nearest to his people. The 
schedule for each day's work for each school 
was the same in each village. It is given on the 
opposite page, and, as will be seen, compares 
favorably with modern schools. 

50 



EDUCATIONAL THEORIES AND PRACTISE 



O 

I 



5 

Q 

n 

I 






8 

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51 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

The children of ten or twelve years of age 
were required to copy and commit to memory 
essays upon agriculture and the planting and 
care of trees. Every child of a certain age was 
required to plant two trees, and thereafter care 
for them, the first-fruits of which were presented 
to the pastor. 

Every Sunday the children of each village in 
rotation were assembled at the church of the 
village to sing the hymns which they had learned 
to recite at the schools, and to receive the ex- 
hortations of their common father. 

As the extraordinary change which these 
efforts produced became known, it had the effect 
of putting larger means at Oberlin's disposal. 
His Strasburg friends increased their subscrip- 
tions, and he was enabled to have a number of 
useful books printed especially for his parish- 
ioners. He procured an electrical machine and 
other philosophical apparatus and certain prizes, 
both to award to pupils and to teachers. He also 
began a circulating library, each village retain- 
ing books for a time and passing them from 
house to house. Among the productions pre- 
pared by him was a set of school-books for the 
exclusive use of the Ban-de-la-Roche and adapted 
to his own program of education. He also pre- 

52 



EDUCATIONAL THEORIES AND PRACTISE 

pared and published an almanac, cleared from 
the usual symbols of superstition and other mat- 
ter to which he took exception, with spaces for 
a daily diary of events. Introducing this al- 
manac, he says : '' Fathers and mothers of fami- 
lies are often puzzled to find suitable baptismal 
names to distinguish their children from others 
who have the same family names. Henceforth, 
if they will consult this new almanac, they will 
find a long list of pretty names, and the sig- 
nification of them when they are of foreign 
derivation.'' 

In this way passed the first four years at 
Waldbach. At this date the fief, which had been 
under Catholic rule, passed into the hands of a 
Protestant lord, and Oberlin, writing to his friend, 
Zeigenhagen, at the time, thus reported it to 
him: 

Sunday, the 7th of April, I gave to Mr. J. J. Tisler, 
who was going to Rothau, a letter for the pastor 
Schweighaeuser, requesting him to present himself to 
the new lord Baron de Dietrich at Strasburg. When 
Mr. Tisler arrived, he found the people waiting for 
Mr. Buerle, who wanted to buy Ban-de-la-Roche. The 
sergeant, who is son-in-law of the solicitor, asked 
Tisler, " What news ? '' "A new lord," Tisler replied. 
*' Yes," said the sergeant, " we are waiting for him, 
Mr. Buerle." " It is not Mr. Buerle," replied Tisler, 

53 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

" but Baron de Dietrich, as pastor Oberlin has assured 
us." Thereupon the sergeant accused Tisler of lying : 
" He knew better." '' That is possible," said Tisler, 
" but I know that our pastor prayed for the old lord and 
for the new lord, and urged the citizens to have confi- 
dence in God," adding that I had named Baron de Diet- 
rich as our future master. Upon hearing that their 
faces changed color, and they said, " Now, we believe 
it," and some of the Catholic women wrung their hands 
and cried, " The Lord help us," and others covered 
their heads, exclaiming, ^' Oh, mein Gott, a Huguenot 
lord ! " All Rothau sent their remembrances to me. 
" Do not fail to tell him that I send my cordial re- 
gards," was repeated on every side. They well knew 
what persecutions they had upon their consciences, and 
how the Ban-de-la-Roche thus passed out of the hands 
of a Catholic lord of fief ; but the fears of the Catho- 
lics were not justified by any reprisals. 

The new lord v^as received v^ith great joy v^hen 
he arrived at Waldbach in July 1771, and shouts 
of, '' Long live the new lord ! '' v^ere heard every- 
w^here. Oberlin, follow^ed by his flock, v^ent out- 
to meet him, and young girls sang songs of w^el- 
come. This v^as greatly appreciated, and from 
that time the baron interested himself in Ober- 
lin and his work. Many wrongs and tyrannies 
imposed by the former lords were corrected, 
the taxes were reduced, and the feudal tithes 
lessened. Baron de Dietrich immediately in- 

54 



EDUCATIONAL THEORIES AND PRACTISE 

creased Oberlin's salary by two hundred francs 
a year, and in many respects the inhabitants 
of the fief had reason for new courage. It 
had been a trying but fruitful four years for 
Oberlin. 



55 



IV 
MAKING A HOME 



IV 

MAKING A HOME 

(1768) 

PREVIOUS to his departure to his moun- 
tain parish, OberHn's mother, mindful of 
his welfare, advised him to take a wife 
with him to the parsonage. He had no such 
purpose for himself, but he was willing to be 
counseled in a matter quite beyond his contem- 
plated plans, and consented to the accepted theory 
that '' it is not good that the man should be alone," 
and that with a good wife one's usefulness would 
be promoted. He received the proposition as a 
general truth, but confessed that he had no 
special interest in its particular application. As 
there was no predilection on his part, his mother, 
in the usual conventional method of the Euro- 
pean countries, became the natural go-between 
in the matter which so intimately concerned his 
entire future. Naturally, she thought that a wife 
who could bring a wholesome portion of earthly 

59 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

goods with her would not, if other things were 
equal, be less valuable in the anticipated heavenly 
relation. The fact that her son appeared to have 
so little personal interest in the matter was a 
difficulty which she was confident might be over- 
come and adjusted. The daughter of a wealthy 
widow was suggested, and, after conference, the 
two mothers put their heads together to bring 
about the match. The ^ young man in the case 
was informed that the young lady did not re- 
gard the possibility ungraciously, and he was 
encouraged to cultivate friendliness. His pas- 
sivity and docility in the proceedings did not 
arise wholly from indifference, but in part from 
his theory and practise from early youth to sub- 
mit every judgment to God and to rely upon him 
for some especially providential indication of his 
will; a practise which easily may savor of pre- 
sumption, as at times it did in future cases with 
Oberlin. Every question with him was a sub- 
ject for prayer, and this one as yet had never 
come under his prayerful consideration. Ober- 
lin had never visited the home of the intended 
lady and appears not even to have known her 
by sight. On this occasion he prayed that God 
would be pleased to reveal his will to him, and to 
direct him in his judgment whether the proposed 

60 



MAKING A HOME 

marriage would be for his happiness and useful- 
ness or not by the manner in which he should 
be received. He did not realize the presumption 
in that he himself should decide in advance what 
the sign of divine approbation was to be. He 
resolved that if the mother should herself make 
the proposition he would regard it as a sign of 
the divine will that he was to go ahead; but 
if she did not, he should consider it his duty to 
draw off without mentioning the subject. A day 
was appointed for the visit, and the mother of 
the young lady in question, who had been in- 
formed of his coming, was waiting to receive 
him. Oberlin reached the widow's door in due 
season and rang the bell. He was received 
courteously, and the young lady soon came in and 
was introduced. A general conversation began 
in the customary terms, and when all the ordi- 
nary commonplaces seemed to have been ex- 
hausted, the situation became embarrassing. 
Oberlin waited for the providential indication 
which he had determined upon, but there was 
no sign. In dead silence the parties looked at 
one another, each waiting for the other to in- 
timate in some way the purpose of the inter- 
view. As the increasing embarrassment became 
somewhat serious Oberlin made his decision, and 

6i 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

with the customary courtesies withdrew, leaving 
mother and daughter without explanation, as if 
he had simply dropped in to make a pleasant call. 
This was the conclusion. 

Oberlin was doubtless right in his belief that 
faith had its place in questions of this kind as 
in all questions, but in this case faith ended with 
sight. Probably any youth in search of a wife 
would naturally conclude that the divine will was 
in the negative when he found that the young 
lady did not particularly attract him. 

It may be said that Oberlin's mother was '' cast 
down, but not destroyed.'' She knew well that 
she had a good son who would make a good 
husband, provided he could once be secured in 
the matrimonial net. Her next tentative began 
with an amiable daughter of a former tutor of 
Oberlin. The tutor knew and highly appreciated 
Oberlin's character and work, and in this case 
the young man w^as attracted to the young lady. 
The marriage contract was drawn up. Mean- 
while, however, a suitor who was wealthy pre- 
sented himself with such urgency and success that 
the temporary eclipse of Oberlin followed, and 
the young lady, after many hesitations, withdrew 
from her engagement with him. After a few 
weeks she repentingly felt that she had done this 

62 



MAKING A HOME 

unwisely, and a note was written by her father 
to OberHn expressing their regret for her mis- 
take and intimating his desire that the former 
relations should be renewed. On the receipt of 
the note Oberlin at once proceeded to the resi- 
dence, and returned the note, saying: '' My dear 
sir, I am accustomed to follow the intimations 
of providence, and from what has recently oc- 
curred I am assured that a union with your 
daughter would promote neither her happiness 
nor mine. Let us therefore forget what is past, 
and let me, as of old, share your affection as 
though no overtures had been made.'' 

This second experience ended in a manner 
more creditable than the first, but not less than 
the first indicates Oberlin's characteristic of faith 
and decisiveness. 

Here ended the mother's endeavors to secure 
for her son a fitting companion. The question 
was settled, but Oberlin was not. His mother, 
however, could not consent to her son's depar- 
ture alone. She accompanied him to Waldbach, 
settled him, unwived, and left his younger sister 
Sophia in charge of his new home. Busy with 
the beginnings of his self-denying life among his 
poor people, he had neither time nor inclination 
to turn his thoughts to any further experiments 

63 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

looking to matrimony. Sister Sophia was all that 
his heart could wish in making a home a sacred 
refuge from his cares. 

Nevertheless, in that remote and lonely place 
it was to be expected that this sister Sophia 
would have many lonely hours, accustomed as 
she was to Strasburg life ; and when a year had 
been spent in this way she induced her intimate 
friend. Mile. Madeline Witter, after a somewhat 
serious illness, to visit her and try the bracing 
mountain air for recuperation ; this rather against 
the preferences of Oberlin. Mile. Witter, who 
was related to Oberlin on her mother's side, was 
the daughter of a former professor of the Univer- 
sity of Strasburg, but had lost both of her parents 
at an early age. She was now a wxU-educated 
city girl, with far more expensive habits than 
were approved by Oberlin, of great charm of 
manner and liveliness of disposition. 

Oberlin's severe views of life and the nature 
of his work were such that the gaiety of the 
visit was not altogether agreeable to him, and 
he lost no occasion to express in a kindly way 
his little disagreements with her apparently less 
serious attitudes of thought and feeling. Mile. 
Witter met his ironies with happy rejoinders; 
quick of wit, she was not second to him in 

64 



MAKING A HOME 

repartee, and while neither of them thought it, 
they were coming to appreciate and enjoy each 
other in their perfect independence of opinions 
and abihty to defend them. Then came an indi- 
cation to OberHn (shall we call it providential?) 
such as he had not distinctly prayed for, that 
this gay, witty, charming young woman would 
be a delightful companion, a real comrade in life. 
As soon as he realized this he determined to 
resist the growing intimacy, giving to himself 
as reasons her joyous temperament, her over- 
elegant toilet, and her worldly habits. Nor was 
he unmindful of the declaration he had often 
heard her make, that she '' would never marry 
a clergyman.'^ The visit continued for some 
weeks, every day of them weaving the toils 
closer about them both. Oberlin, in his jour- 
nal, confesses the conquest that had been made 
and recorded '^ two sleepless nights.'^ 

While providence continued the intimations in 
this unsolicited way, the time came when the 
young lady's immediate departure was af hand. 
Repeatedly seeking divine guidance, the young 
pastor looked for signs to indicate God's will. 
It is recorded that he solemnly declared to God 
that if he would give him a sign, he would act 
accordingly. The only sign which came was " an 
5 65 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

inner voice that seemed to repeat, ' Take her for 
your wife/ '' He repHed to himself, '' But it is 
impossible; our dispositions and our tastes are 
so dissimilar,'' and the inner voice reiterated, 
'' Take her for your wife/' That the wish was 
father to the voice is clear enough. The voice 
was as evidently a real one. It was the voice 
of his own heart, though Oberlin did not then 
so interpret it. 

He decided at last that this indeed was the 
intimation of providence, and then he lost no 
time in obeying the divine will. It was a glad 
obedience. He sought the lady under the shade 
of a tree which still stands in the garden, and 
how his declaration has come down to us in 
words I know not, but his original biographer 
and friend, who was assisted by Oberlin's daugh- 
ter in handing down the romance, writes that 
Oberlin said : '' You are about to leave us, my 
dear friend, but I have had an intimation that 
you are destined by divine will to be the partner 
of my life. If you will resolve upon this step, 
so important to us both, I expect you will give 
me your candid opinion about it before your 
departure." 

Let us hope that his biographer and friend did 
not get correctly all that was said on this occa- 

66 










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MAKING A HOME 

sion, even if the young missionary may have 
been enabled to interweave these words into 
his declaration. We know that Oberlin was 
accustomed to enter in his diary his daily 
thoughts, and it is quite possible that in the cool 
of the evening, with his pen in hand, in the 
mental reaction after such an experience, he 
thought that he made these identical remarks. 
At all events we may be sure that he asked this 
sweet girl, who had abundant humor and a sense 
of the ridiculous, to share his life in such a way 
that she did not laugh at its putting, and with- 
out concealing from her that a life of sacrifice, 
solitude, and poverty went with it. The young 
woman did not need time to find out what might 
be the providential intimations for herself. Her 
heart was already in Oberlin's ownership; she 
arose, placed one hand before her eyes, and with- 
out a word spoken held out the other toward 
him. He clasped it in his own, and there is 
no record beyond this. 

Oberlin never doubted after that that the in- 
timation came from heaven; and assuredly it 
did. Their marriage followed soon, July 6, 1768, 
and Sophia and not Madeline was the one who 
returned to live at Strasburg. This happy matri- 
mony was not in accord with the conventional 

67 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

mode formally arranged by parents, but it was 
a true love marriage. In Oberlin's records we 
see what an invaluable assistant she became to 
her husband in his indefatigable labors, temper- 
ing his zeal with her prudence and forwarding 
his plans by her wise cooperation. The qualities 
which she possessed he needed, and they made 
her influence of the greatest value. She well 
fulfilled her part in the endeavors for the better- 
ment of these poor people, identifying herself 
with all that concerned her husband's vocation, 
cheerfully meeting his every consecration to the 
work of God with an equal one of her own. 
When the infant schools were started, she set 
the example for others in teaching. When the 
women of the parish were unwilling to learn to 
spin cotton in order to help the household earn- 
ings, which practise Oberlin introduced, his wife 
took the new industry in hand and led them on 
to the profits of it. 

A quotation from a letter of Oberlin's well 
illustrates her spirit. A school had been opened 
at Dessau in Germany which had greatly inter- 
ested Oberlin. He considered it in its methods the 
model school of Germany. One of the profes- 
sors there received a letter from Oberlin which 
said : '' How I would like to spend weeks near 

68 



MAKING A HOME 

you, to see and learn everything and return to 
the Ban-de-la-Roche to make this place in the 
mountains worthier by your knowledge! While 
reading your book with my wife we were saying, 
^ Why do we not have some of the money which 
is so useless in some hands ? ' We looked around 
to see if we could discover anything convertible 
into money. Suddenly my wife, beaming with 
joy, brought me a pair of earrings, asking to 
have them sent to aid your philanthropic insti- 
tution. They cost her before marriage thirty 
florins. You can imagine how pleased I was. 
If the publication of my good little wife's name 
can influence others to follow her example, we 
cheerfully consent to it. Perhaps it may induce 
some other people to make researches in their 
jewel boxes.'' Oberlin's life was both richer and 
stronger for this happy union, and his work 
from its beginning to its close bears the impress 
of her loving and beautiful character. 



69 



V 
A ROAD TO CIVILIZATION 



V 



A ROAD TO CIVILIZATION 
(1771-1773) 

THE schools had been organized and sup- 
pHed with teachers; the next step in 
civiHzation was to connect the almost 
inaccessible villages with the movements of life 
in the outside world. The people had been so 
long in their wretched condition that they were 
quite content to remain in it without disturbance. 
They never had made roads, and had no wish 
to begin now. It was more difficult to enlist the 
sympathy of generous givers in Strasburg, and 
others outside of the mountain districts, for mate- 
rial improvement than it was to secure help to 
relieve wants which were mental and spiritual. 
Oberlin could scarcely expect to appeal to philan- 
thropists for aid to blast rocks and to build 
bridges. Nevertheless, without roads the people 
must continue in extreme poverty. There would 
be no market for their produce, even if they 

n 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

should undertake to raise it. Nor was there any 
encouragement for them to introduce improve- 
ments in agriculture. During the greater por- 
tion of the year the traveled ways which they 
called roads could not be used on account of 
landslides and mountain torrents. 

First of all, the road to Rothau, the highway 
to Strasburg, needed to be made safe for con- 
stant communication. It was now little more 
than a by-path, and the river Bruche, which was 
a torrent when snows melted and the streams 
were swollen, at such times could not be crossed. 
A safe road for all seasons meant that a solid 
wall of stone for nearly a mile and a half along 
the Bruche should be constructed with a per- 
manent bridge across it at the foot of the hill. 

When Oberlin made known his plan to the 
people, there were no words in their vocabulary 
to even partially express their amazement. If 
he had suggested a step-ladder to the moon, they 
would not have been more astonished. What- 
ever deprecatory adjectives were in their posses- 
sion were freely used in their characterization 
of such an impossible scheme. The preacher was 
altogether out of his sphere. They positively re- 
fused to sustain him. His vocation was preach- 
ing. Why should he come to them with exhor- 

74 



A ROAD TO CIVILIZATION 

tations for roads and masonry? Without regard 
for his feelings or judgment they said: ''No; 
we will not have it. Our pastor may as well 
understand this now as ever ! '' This much and 
more was the answer to Oberlin's plan for good 
roads. 

Ignorant people are never more obstinate in 
ignorance than when any attempt is made to 
improve upon practises which have gained the 
adherence of generations and which they have 
inherited. It would have been an appropriate 
time for a less determined man to have tendered 
his resignation. The irresistible force had evi- 
dently run against an immovable object. Ober- 
lin did not propose to run away from difficulties. 
This was one thing that he did not know how 
to do. He knew that he was needed in Ban- 
de-la-Roche, whether he was wanted or not. 
He was there to stay. He was there to accom- 
plish. The parishes could not starve him out, 
for he knew how to starve. 

'' The road must be made/^ he said. '^ It would 
be useless even if it were made/' they replied, 
'' for we could not get across the stream when 
it is full any better than now.'' He replied, 
*' We will use the rocks which we blast in mak- 
ing the road for abutments and throw a bridge 

75 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

across." Their lack of faith in roads was mar- 
velous, but the proposition to bridge their 
mountain streams utterly confounded them. It 
confirmed them in the conclusion that their pas- 
tor was an unsafe man to follow. Such a de- 
parture from the old paths evidently showed 
them not only the danger of theological studies, 
but a capacity also for speculative views that 
would halt at nothing. If their preacher was 
to persist in these new notions, he must do it 
alone. 

Stuber had characterized them as " an iron- 
headed people," and Oberlin felt that they were. 
All the more they needed him, and though their 
conduct was disquieting, it had not the least 
effect upon his purpose. After the matter had 
been discussed and sufficiently considered, and 
Oberlin had preached on the Lord's Day with his 
usual earnestness from the text, '' There remain- 
eth therefore a rest to the people of God," the 
people with unspeakable astonishment saw their 
pastor, bright and early Monday morning, with 
a pick on his shoulder, accompanied by three or 
four who were loyal to him, passing through the 
village to begin the road-making. Their wonder 
grew when they saw him at work, picking and 
digging and shoveling away stones that he could 

76 



A ROAD TO CIVILIZATION 

not lift with his hands. There was manhood 
enough among his people to assert itself after 
such an appeal as this. It was an illustration 
of applied Christianity altogether new to them, 
and it was immediately followed by a great 
revival of practical religion in the village. The 
next day a score were working with him, the 
next day following fifty, until by the time they 
had reached the stream there were no doubters; 
all believed in good roads, and always had. Prob- 
ably the last man to join the majority went home 
and told his wife that the original idea was his 
own, and that he would have proposed it to 
Oberlin but for the conviction that ministers 
ought to confine themselves to the gospel and 
let the labor question alone. If so, it may be 
that the trusting soul believed him. I find no 
record of this hypothetical man, but he must 
have been there — he always is — and there could 
scarcely have been an exception in this case to 
the ordinary experience of late comers in suc- 
cessful reforms. 

Oberlin, as if he had been a contractor from 
his youth up, assigned to each individual an 
allotted post and gave personal instruction and 
direction on every side. He did not fail to select 
the most difficult places for himself and seemed 

77 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

regardless of the thorns and loose stones which 
bruised his hands. 

With such courage and patience difficulties were 
removed as the rocks and gravel were. The 
demonstration of successful work brought re- 
newed appreciation and aid from friends in Stras- 
burg, and in the end a fine road was completed 
along the course of the Bruche. Streams which 
often inundate the highways were guided into 
channels made to receive them and a wooden 
bridge was constructed. Replaced later by stone, 
it still bears the name then given it, ''Le Pont 
de la Charite.'^ 

Thirty years after this, Oberlin received a 
letter from the mayor of Rothau, stating that 
he saw the bridge needed repairs and requesting 
that the necessary funds should be put to that 
use. The reply of the man whose experience 
is above related is characteristic: 

Sir, the Mayor, — The bridge — the poor orphan 
bridge — is named " Bridge of Charity," because after 
several accidents charity built it ; and until now charity 
has maintained it. There are no other funds which 
exist for this object. 

May God be with you. Sir, the Mayor, and direct 

^ * Yours, 

John Frederic Oberlin. 

78 



VI 
CALL TO AMERICA 



VI 

CALL TO AMERICA 

(1775) 

SEVEN years had passed in this missionary 
work of laying foundations for better ways 
of Hving and better Hves in improved con- 
ditions when OberHn was startled by another 
missionary question as unexpected as his first, 
and which asked of him a still greater sacrifice. 
A colony of German Protestants from Saltz- 
burg in Austria, who had chosen exile instead 
of the surrender of their faith, had located in the 
State of Pennsylvania and had given the Scrip- 
tural name of '' Ebenezer '' to their settlement. 
Early in their history in this new country their 
pastor and leader had died, and they had ap- 
pealed to a distinguished theologian at Augs- 
burg to secure for them a successor. Already 
Oberlin's missionary successes were becoming 
known to many, notwithstanding his remoteness 
from observation, and the choice of a leader for 
6 81 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

this far-away ministry settled upon this devoted 
pastor in the mountains. He was urged to take 
the direction of the colony in America and do 
for it what he had been doing for the moun- 
taineers of the Vosges. The call of the people 
exiled for faith's sake appealed deeply to his 
sympathies. The colony in Ebenezer, with a 
prospective large development, seemed to offer 
him a wider scope for his missionary zeal. He 
submitted the question to his wife, then in deli- 
cate health. Her ready response was, '' Where 
thou goest, I will go,'' and notwithstanding Ober- 
lin's deep interest in his present charge, this 
seemed to him the call of God. 

Letters to his brother and his mother, which 
follow, appear to have been written under much 
stress of feeling, and evidently are replies to their 
appeals to dissuade him, and to have him recon- 
sider his intention. He prefaced the first with 
these lines: 

" Ich will dir einen Alter bauen 
Der Ebenetzer heissen soil, 
Drauf soil man diese Worte schauen : 
Gott fuhret seine Kinder wohl." ^ • 

» " To Thee will I build an altar; 
Ebenezer shall be its name, 
Thereupon shall be seen these words: 
God guides his children well.*' 

82 



CALL TO AMERICA 

Best and dearest of Brothers, — However great 
the sorrow I feel at the very thought of leaving you 
and our dear mother, I must nevertheless abide by my 
determination, to which neither my wife nor myself 
have been brought by any human influence. The fact 
that every one stands for or against a deed cannot 
decide a question of conscience. By baptism I have 
contracted an alliance with a Master who knows more 
than I and is more powerful, who has adopted me as 
his son, who wishes to be my father, but who demands, 
with filial love and devotion, obedience and submission. 
... I have begged God since my early youth to be 
my guide always, to make me always see his will and 
make me docile and faithful. He has done it, and I 
have not been deceived in my expectations from him. 
... In a multitude of cases I have been able to notice 
his special leadership. Whenever I was undecided as 
to what to do, I called upon him for counsel, and it 
was always granted me in sortie way or other; con- 
sidering which I should be a most ungrateful and 
shameless being if despite the countless fulfilment of 
his promises I wished suddenly to turn away from 
him and make my decision influenced by purely worldly 
interests, by my own convenience or the advice of 
men. 

It is demanded of a man of honor that he act after 
his own most sincere convictions. In my eyes I would 
be unworthy of being your brother did I wish to act 
otherwise, even if the persons who are wrongly thought 
to have been the cause of my resolution were of an 
entirely different opinion. 

83 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

I did tell myself at first that God is blessing my 
undertaking in this land, and that the good that I might 
do in Ebenezer is uncertain. But who am I then to 
have the right to argue thus in opposition? Does not 
the Lord himself know where to place his servants for 
the greatest good of his cause? Must I then adore 
God with my lips only, adding to the number of those 
who know only how to say, ''Lord, Lord;" but if 
I desire to adore him by doing his will, why should 
I not go according to his voice ? 

As soon as I had received the letter in which was 
the question of this call, I did what I always do in 
doubtful cases. With entire confidence in his promises 
I addressed myself to God in the name of Jesus Christ, 
to beg him ardently to do what he has already done 
many times for me, and to let me know whether I must 
say Yes or No. My wife, to whom I had given this 
letter containing the call — withdrawing without say- 
ing a word — did the same, and we both to our mutual 
surprise soon came to the profound conviction that 
we must say '' Yes, Lord; here we are." 

I know only too well that many persons do not know 
the power of prayer; but I also know that it is not 
because of any lack of clear and definite promises, nor 
of any lack of God's faithfulness. If then it be the 
will of God, as it is our conviction, all other consider- 
ations must disappear. 

Jesus is the sovereign shepherd of the flock at Ban- 
de-la-Roche, and always will be, and will know how 
to give it every time the one who is suited for it for 
a subordinate pastor. 

84 



CALL TO AMERICA 

If he wishes us to serve him at Ebenezer, he who 
holds the world in his hands will certainly find the 
means to make us come there; and if we are to die 
there, he will surely know on the day of resurrection 
how to find the place where he shall have entrusted 
us to the sleep of death. 

I know well that our intentions and resolutions are 
regarded by many as fanatical enthusiasm. But what 
would it matter if they were to see this in our whole 
conduct ? It is enough that I know that I seek earnestly 
to make my thoughts and actions conform to the holy 
word which I preach. If people allow themselves 
some jests at our expense, we are reassured by the 
words of the Holy Scripture, " Whosoever therefore 
shall confess me before men, him will I confess also 
before my Father which is in heaven.'' Besides, we 
are fortified by other passages like this : " Not every 
one that saith unto me. Lord, Lord, shall enter into 
the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will 
of my Father which is in heaven." " He that loveth 
father or mother more than me is not worthy of 
me." ... I must end. Will you ask me why I have 
gone into so many details? Surely, rather more for 
my own sake than for yours, dear brother, whose 
righteousness I know, for I know you like to be useful 
to me, and you can be in this case by communicating 
this letter to all those who regard my decision from a 
false point of view. 

Farewell, and never fail to love less than you have 
done all your life the one whom you have loved with 
the most ardent and changeless affection, though he be 

85 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

on the other hemisphere, your antipode, nevertheless 
your faithful younger brother, 

John Frederic Oberlin, Pastor. 

Autumn, 1774. 

In the letter to his mother, which is lengthy 
and more in detail, portions strictly relating to 
his family experiences are omitted. 

My dear Mother, — Several dear friends say that 
in my letter to my brother I have failed to prove that 
it is according to God's will that I should go to Eben- 
ezer. They are right. All that I wish to show in the 
letter is that as a Christian, I could answer only in the 
afifirmative when I was asked if I were willing to 
accept the call. I know that it does not necessarily 
follow that God wishes one so disposed to go. 

Oberlin next refers to the changes in his life 
plans in going to the mountains instead of taking 
the army chaplaincy, saying, '' What the Lord 
wants is the willing heart.'' He continues : 

The same thing can happen in regard to Ebenezer. 
That is, I cannot prove that it is the will of God that 
I should go there. I cannot prove it until I am there, 
or at least until I am on the way. God is my Father, 
and all I have to do is to go where he tells me, like 
an obedient child. This is what I have tried to do up 

86 



CALL TO AMERICA 

to this time. I still think that I must reply in the 
affirmative for the following reasons : ^ 

Second. Since I have taken a more direct path in 
the kingdom of Jesus Christ and have acquired a more 
special knowledge of the human mind, my heart has 
been filled with pity for so many people, blind pagans, 
who cost our Lord the same sacrifice as we others in 
Strasburg and to whom it has not even been given to 
taste the crumbs that fall from our table. These feel- 
ings have inspired me to help such as much as lay 
within my power. Strasburg is a nursery for the 
clergy, among whom there are many excellent men. 
How different it is in Asia, in Africa, and in America ! 
Our Lord taught his disciples to consider humanity 
everywhere as the hardest field. His doctrines form 
our belief; but do our actions respond to them? Do 
we work with the ardor Christianity demands for the 
well-being of all the world? How many excellent 
things could be done, how many thousands of souls 
could enjoy in Jesus Christ the blessings which have 
fallen to our lot, if with the mind of Christ we em- 
braced a larger sphere with generous effort! These 
souls abandoned by our selfishness, would they not 
then fall to our care ? How many times have I prayed 
the Lord to dispose of me, and of the children he might 
give me, and to make use of us where according to his 
plans we would be the most useful! Ebenezer is a 
German and Lutheran parish, but there are in its near 
neighborhood four tribes of Indians which have daily 

* For the sake of brevity the first reason, which has been al- 
ready given in the letter to his brother, is omitted. 

87 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

connection with it. One meets there, moreover, a great 
number of wretched Africans who serve as slaves. 

Third. To learn languages one must have a good 
memory; mine has always been poor. I have found 
.it difficult to acquire languages which do not have 
analogy with the German or Latin. I know I would 
meet with great difficulty in learning the Indian lan- 
guage sufficiently well to be able to give instruction 
in that tongue, but I could do much good indirectly 
in forming institutions and in setting up schools for 
young negroes. 

Fourth, The poor condition of the parish of Eben- 
ezer has deeply moved me. The duties of a pastor 
are very laborious there. The plantations are separated 
from one another by considerable distances. The roads 
are bad and difficult for travel. The parish in this 
condition is like an orphan since the death of their 
worthy pastor, Bolzius. The schools need to be re- 
formed, and the Ban-de-la-Roche has enabled me to 
acquire some knowledge of the subject. 

I could also profitably use the experience which I 
have acquired here, in founding at Ebenezer different 
establishments for their material and temporal devel- 
opment as well as for their religious and spiritual 
necessities. 

Fifth. The parish at Waldbach is in much more 
fortunate condition than that of Ebenezer. It has now 
at its head a Protestant lord who approves and en- 
courages the improvements already made. These im- 
provements are already far enough advanced for a 
conscientious successor with only moderate talents to 

88 



CALL TO AMERICA 

continue. Besides, Ban-de-Ia-Roche has always a com- 
mander and friend in Mr. Stuber who will not cease 
giving it his paternal attachment. . . . 

My conscience tells me that I pray God not that he 
may let me stay here, nor make me go, but only that 
his will may be done, and that his kingdom may come, 
and that I may submit entirely to his order. 

I am, and will remain till death and after, dear 
mother^ 

Your obedient, 

John Frederic. 
Beginning 1775 

Having settled the question in his ov^n mind, 
he prepared himself v^ith great care for his mis- 
sion across the sea. He examined geographies 
and books on travel such as he could secure con- 
cerning America. He tool^ numerous notes and 
drew up a plan of action for his new sphere of 
activities. In anticipation of his departure he 
prepared a farewell letter to his parish, intend- 
ing to have it printed in a little booklet as a 
souvenir and sent to them at his embarkment. 
To communicate across the sea and get replies 
to questions necessary to perfect the arrange- 
ments required time, and at the very last, when 
all had been adjusted and Oberlin was ready 
for departure, word came from America that war 

89 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

between the States and the mother country was 
imminent; this was soon followed by the intel- 
ligence that the conflict had begun in earnest, 
and was active in the very State to which he 
was going, and that his ministry would be liable 
to the interruptions of war. Certainly his mis- 
sionary plans for education and development in 
the new country could not now be carried out. 
It was plain to him and to all that he must wait 
upon the issues of the war, — a sad disappoint- 
ment, as he had fully consecrated himself to 
what he was confident was the will of God. 

The farewell letter, here translated, found 
among his papers after his death, never came 
to the knowledge of his mountain parish. 

To THE Parishes of Waldbach in the Country of Ban- 
de-la-Roche : 

My very dear Brothers, beloved Parishioners, 
— The faithful servant of Jesus Christ, to whose 
generous care we owe the translation and printing of 
this handsome booklet, has requested me to dedicate 
it to you and say my last farewell. 

What satisfaction it is to me to be able again to 
speak to you by writing, now that I can no longer do 
it by mouth ! This is at last the day of which I have 
spoken to you so many times, to make you more atten- 
tive to what I have preached to you in the name of 
my Master. 

90 



CALL TO AMERICA 

The day of our separation! With what peace of 
mind I could leave you if I knew you were all in the 
hands of that faithful Saviour from whom I know that 
neither the world nor the power of hell would be able 
to snatch you away — unless you yourselves separated 
yourselves from him! 

Oh, hasten yet, you who have neglected up to this 
time to accept him; hasten while yet your hearts are 
touched, hasten to prostrate yourselves at the feet of 
Jesus your Redeemer and beg his pardon for your 
sinful disregard. 

Offer your hearts to him, just as they are ; supplicate 
him to change them and make them such as he wishes 
them to be. 

Never forget what he himself has said and caused 
his faithful apostles to say — which I have often re- 
peated to you — that one cannot be saved unless he 
is regenerated; born anew, according to St. John 3, 
and animated by his Spirit (Rom. 8: 9, 14) ; that we 
must be united to him as the branch to the tree, and 
continually draw from him the strength for a holy life; 
that all we do out of harmony with him, however beau- 
tiful and noble it may appear in the eyes of the world 
— honest in a pagan fashion — is of no value in his 
eyes because the motive is not love and gratitude toward 
him, who has done everything for our salvation and 
has deserved that we should do everything for 
him, and for the advancement of his kingdom. St. 
John XV. 

Oh, my dear flock, you whom the sovereign pastor 
has deigned to entrust to me now for eight years, I 

91 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

implore you attach yourselves to the divine pastor and 
never to men. 

Men are in his hands, and he is always able to give 
you good faithful workers unless through lack of faith 
and obedience toward him you render yourselves un- 
w^orthy of it. 

The Lord of the harvest now calls me, contrary to 
my expectations, far from you to guard another one 
of his flocks which has cost him the same price as 
you, but which is in need of what many among you 
have held in too slight esteem ; and they have no way 
to meet their need. 

We shall be separated as to the body, but I hope we 
shall not be so by spirit. I have always tenderly loved 
you. I love you still, and all the world's treasures 
would not have accomplished what the command of my 
divine Lord has done, — I mean, to make me leave you. 
But I shall never forget you. Oh, do not forget me 
either. Do not forget the exhortations and words of 
the Holy Scriptures which I have unceasingly repeated 
to you. Do not forget to implore God's blessing on 
the discourses which I shall address to my new flock 
on the other side of the sea, and know that what you 
shall ask of the Father in the name and for the king- 
dom of Jesus he will grant unto you, and that all the 
blessings he will grant to my American flock because 
of your prayers will add to the brilliancy of the crowns 
you have won by your zeal. 

Farewell then, dear, my most dear Parishes. We 
shall evidently not see each other again until we see 
each other before the throne of the Lamb, where, filled 

92 



CALL TO AMERICA 

with rapture for all his great and divine goodness, we 
will give eternal praise, honor, and thanksgiving for 
all unto Him. Amen. 

J. F. Oberlin. 
Written this 177- 

These letters represent Oberlin's thought, feel- 
ing, and expression at this period of his life. It 
is impossible to read his farev^ell letter w^ithout 
sharing in the deep disappointment v^hich came 
to him in the relinquishment of what he sup- 
posed was an accomplished fact. The colony 
at Ebenezer scattered and failed. We cannot 
know what might have been its history with 
such an organizer and leader as Oberlin; but 
it was proved to be no cause for regret that 
it was God's good pleasure that he should re- 
main where his uncompleted missionary lessons 
should not be interrupted. 

Oberlin had always felt the deepest interest 
in America. He carefully collected from every 
available source facts about the country, which 
he kept in a special portfolio made by himself 
for the purpose. On this he pasted one of his 
printed texts — such as he distributed when he 
called on his people as a reminder of his call 
and the date, with these words : '' He which 

93 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and 
he which soweth bountifully shall reap also 
bountifully." 

When it became known beyond the mountains 
that the war between the colonies and the mother 
country had detained Oberlin, efforts were made 
to detach him from the work which he had 
proposed to surrender by offers of command- 
ing positions from several churches, but disap- 
pointed as he was, nothing could tempt him 
from missionary service. His reply to an in- 
fluential church with its generous salary was, 
'' The best work for me is where I can do the 
most good with the least recompense." 

From that time he bent every energy to the 
work in hand. Baron de Dietrich, lord of 
the district, now caused the church at Fouday, 
the same which is still standing, to be built for 
Oberlin without expense to the parish, and in 
many ways showed his appreciation and high 
esteem for the good missionary who was bring- 
ing new life to the fief. 



94 



yii 

BEREAVEMENT AND RENEWED CON- 
SECRATION TO PUBLIC WELFARE 



VII 

BEREAVEMENT AND RENEWED CONSE- 
CRATION TO PUBLIC WELFARE 

(1784) 

IN 1784 the death of his beloved wife had a 
most powerful influence both upon the direc- 
tion of the thoughts and feeling of Ober- 
lin and upon the whole course of his future. 
Nothing had prepared Oberlin for his bereave- 
ment. He was struck as by a thunderbolt, and 
for some time it seemed impossible for him to 
recover himself. In his diary we read : '' I 
prayed the Lord continually to let me die and 
be buried with her. God, who sent this terrible 
blow, treated me with great kindness, as a de- 
lirious patient whom one seeks to recall slowly 
to his senses.'^ At length, however, after an 
interval of melancholy stupor, as he recorded, 
'' I experienced the merciful assistance of God, 
notwithstanding my overwhelming sorrow.'" 
From that time no complaint, no murmur ever 
7 97 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

escaped his lips. Every day he seemed to walk 
in communion with her and to be conscious of 
her presence. He constantly looked forward to 
the time when they should be reunited, and the 
desire for this never left him in the succeeding 
years. More than ever he lived as a citizen of 
the other world. He never ceased to believe that 
his wife watched over him and daily influenced 
him. 

The management of his household and the 
care of his children were undertaken by Louise 
Schlepler, who had come as a teacher and who 
had lived in the Oberlin household for eight 
years. She remained in this capacity as a friend 
rather than as one in service during the life of 
Oberlin, and her grave is beside his in the 
churchyard at Fouday. 

Oberlin's profound sorrow did not cause him 
to relax his efforts for the redemption of his 
people; he rather redoubled them, in order 
that he might be found faithful when the mo- 
ment of his departure from this life, which he 
longed for, should arrive. He sought to use 
every day as if it were to be his only day. 
Realizing that all permanent advancement of the 
people in their modes of life depended upon their 
improvement in agriculture, he brought to this: 

98 



CONSECRATION TO PUBLIC WELFARE 

end every stimulus which he could command. 
Organizing an agricultural club, he presided over 
it. He introduced new vegetables and gave in- 
struction as to their cultivation. He investigated 
with the greatest care the nature of the soil and 
learned what it was adapted to produce. By the 
study of books and by correspondence he sought 
the most improved methods of culture and made 
careful inquiries as to the best productions of 
similar soil and climate in Europe. He procured 
flaxseed from Riga on the shores of the Baltic, 
and clover-seed from Holland. The potato, which 
had been previously introduced but had prac- 
tically failed to pay for its planting, was thrown 
aside and a new and excellent kind was brought 
from one of the provinces of France. 

A daughter of Oberlin testifies : '' The cultiva- 
tion of the potato was rare at the beginning of 
my father's ministry. As in other places, there 
was fear that this vegetable might be hurtful. 
In the spring the ordinary food was wild herbs 
cooked with milk; and people were extremely 
embarrassed if their neighbors saw the potato 
used as a food. It was eaten on the sly. They 
were always careful, if any one entered during a 
meal, to cover the dish, so that it might not be 
known." 

99 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

Giving this cultivation of the potato his per- 
sonal care, he soon saw the people exporting 
from their successful crop to the people in the 
valleys. New grasses also were procured. Lec- 
tures were given upon the value of fertilizers, 
showing the people how to collect fertilizing 
material and how to apply it; how to drain 
their meadows, how to protect them from the 
washings of mountain torrents, and how thus to 
prevent the wasting of their lands. Much waste 
land was in this way brought into use and 
enclosed. 

In his appeal to the villages for the irrigation 
of their fields, which came to be done with 
thoroughness and great advantage, he makes his 
scheme a religious duty. '' I beg all those who 
do not contribute with all their ability and in- 
fluence to make the needful arrangements for 
a just and brotherly system of watering the 
meadows, to consider that the love of God and 
of one's neighbor is the sum of all the com- 
mandments.'' Many of their grass-lands, for 
lack of irrigation, were cultivated to so little 
purpose that it is said the wife could carry home 
in her apron all the hay her husband could mow 
in half a day. He urged them to put aside their 
rude agricultural implements, himself buying 

100 



CONSECRATION TO PUBLIC WELFARE 

better and more modern ones from Strasburg, 
to be paid for by the people on instalments. 

Never was there a more practical utilitarian 
in missions. Nothing escaped his indefatigable 
attention. Nothing was beneath it. His ardor 
and enthusiasm were only surpassed by the pa- 
tience and prudence which he used in inducing 
his parishioners to adopt his suggestions. No 
sooner was his agricultural club at work than 
he added a horticultural society and began to 
create nurseries, from which he distributed young 
plants, selecting the trees more appropriate for 
the climate. 

But with all the religious exhortation, attached 
to his instructions in farming, tree planting, and 
the care of cattle, he never lacked those who 
opposed him step by step. They could not under- 
stand how a man born and bred in a city could 
get any wisdom worth their consideration along 
the lines of their own experience. They had 
become convinced against their will that he had 
discovered something about road-making, but 
that he should presume to a knowledge above 
theirs in practical farming, the care of land 
and the culture of it, roused resentful objections 
continually. Every proposition must needs be 
demonstrated before it would be accepted. 

lOI 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

His success with his fields and fruit trees and 
garden was his answer to their questionings. 
Belonging to the parsonage were two barren 
fields which had always been noted for the poor- 
ness of their soil, and through which was a 
much frequented thoroughfare. His agricul- 
tural neighbors smiled and wagged their heads 
knowingly when their parson began to turn this 
poor land into a nursery of fruit trees, in- 
tending to make it an orchard. They saw him 
deeply trench the ground and fill it with suit- 
able soil. Next, he procured approved scions of 
apples, pears, cherries, and other fruits. His 
watch and care, his judicious thinning out and 
pruning upon a field thought to be unfit for any 
profitable use, brought a fruitful orchard in a 
few years as his justification. The excellent 
fruits, such as were new to the locality, before 
the eyes of all the passers-by spoke for them- 
selves and for him. With all their inherited 
ideas and lack of ideas, they were once more 
convinced that Oberlin knew something besides 
his theological certainties, and gradually became 
more willing to take his piety and practical util- 
ity mixed, as they were indeed in generous 
doses. 

So earnest was Oberlin in the material better- 

102 



CONSECRATION TO PUBLIC WELFARE 

ment of his villages that his steadfast friend, 
Stuber, in Strasburg, wrote him a second letter, 
warning him lest his regard for these practi- 
calities should crowd upon his spiritual duties. 
Oberlin was the last man on the face of the 
earth who needed that caution! It was this 
very personal contact with the every-day world 
and his interest in meeting every-day wants that 
protected him from a natural mysticism and from 
a tendency to fanaticism. These duties for the 
neglected poor were so many safety-valves for 
his fervent spirit. By directing his zeal and 
enthusiasm from that which is purely spiritual 
into healthful channels and engaging his extraor- 
dinary earnestness in ordinary affairs, his bal- 
ance of thought and feeling were preserved and 
kept sound. All that he did and urged upon his 
people was included in his interpretation of the 
ministry of the gospel. Religious motives were 
underneath all his instructions and plans, and 
were invariably in evidence. In his directions 
for irrigation, for example, he added, '^ Our Lord 
died for us; let us live for him,'' and one of 
the rules of the horticultural society was, '' Each 
member should try to distinguish himself by 
Christian conduct, brotherly kindness, consider- 
ation, and politeness towards his fellows.'' 

103 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

Take, for example, a direction to his people 
on planting trees, sent to them in a circular 
letter : 

Dear Friends, — Satan, the enemy of mankind, 
rejoices when we demolish and destroy. Our Lord 
Jesus Christ, on the contrary, rejoices when we labor 
for the public good. You all desire to be saved by 
him and hope to be partakers of his glory. Please him 
then by all possible means. 

He is pleased when from a principle of love you 
plant trees for the public benefit. Now is the season. 
Be willing then to plant them. Plant them also in 
the best possible manner. Remember that you do it 
to please Him. Put all your roads in good condition. 
Ornament them. Use some of your trees for this 
purpose and attend to their growth. 

Another circular, curious and characteristic, 
reads : 

Dear Friends of Fouday, — Several persons at 
Zolbach have long desired that the road between Fou- 
day and Zolbach, in your district, should be mended 
and put in good repair. Such a measure would be 
greatly for the advantage of Fouday. But for whose 
sake will you do it ? Will you do it from love to your 
heavenly Father? Will you do it from love to the 
Lord Jesus Christ, who during his stay upon earth went 
about doing good and who redeemed us to be a peculiar 
people zealous of good works? Will you do it from 

104 



CONSECRATION TO PUBLIC WELFARE 

love to God's children at Zolbach? Will you do it 
from a compassion to the animals which your heavenly 
Father has created? etc. 



Another circular, from his own press, asked 
these questions among others : '' Do you punc- 
tually contribute your share towards repairing 
roads? Have you planted upon the common at 
least twice as many trees as there are heads in 
your family? Have you planted them properly, 
or only as idle and ignorant people would do 
to save themselves trouble? Have you proper 
drains in your yards for carrying off the refuse 
water? Do you keep a dog unless there is ab- 
solute necessity?'' Oberlin was thus constantly 
reminding the people of their daily duties as a 
part of their Christian life. 

This every-day attention to schools, to parish 
work, to roads and lands and cattle and trees 
did not exhaust his plans. When he entered 
upon his mission there was not a mechanic in 
the entire district. He set the example in this 
direction with a workshop of his own, where he 
had a turner's lathe, a complete set of carpen- 
ter's tools, a printing-press, and a bookbindery. 
In connection with his schools he selected those 
in whom he discovered mechanical tastes and 

105 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

had them trained as shoemakers, blacksmiths, 
carpenters, glaziers, painters, and masons. Such 
as he could not provide with instruction at home 
he sent to Strasburg, that they might learn their 
trades and return to teach others; and greatly 
to his satisfaction, he succeeded finally in induc- 
ing the sons of a prosperous manufacturer at 
Basle in Switzerland to establish a branch of their 
ribbon factory at Fouday, which furnished the 
young women of the villages with regular and 
profitable employment. 

One reason for the distressing condition of the 
people as Oberlin found them was their custom 
of constantly mortgaging their future, always 
anticipating their scanty crops, which kept them 
in peonage because of their debts. It was a 
great victory over established thriftlessness when 
he succeeded in putting an end to this, and in 
getting those whose lives were burdened with 
special obligations square with the world. He 
did not cease his exhortations to this end. '' You 
are not living Christian lives until you have paid 
all your debts, your royal and your feudal taxes, 
the weaver, the schoolmaster, the carpenter, the 
nailmaker, the grocer, the workman, all. But it 
is not enough to pay one's debts. One must 
avoid making others.^' 

io6 



CONSECRATION TO PUBLIC WELFARE 

Another phase of his wise philanthropies was 
his organization of practical charities. '' The 
poor ye have always with you/' said our Lord; 
and here, while many were rising above their 
extreme poverty, there were those who could not, 
or did not, succeed in getting beyond want. The 
wolf was ever at their door. To help such 
Oberlin organized, presided over, and directed a 
'' Charity Society,'' giving it his personal care, 
that the funds raised for the sick and infirm and 
worthy needy ones should not aid or encourage 
indolence or preventable want; and he was very 
insistent that all applications should have most 
careful investigation. In every case an answer 
was strictly required as to the cause of the 
necessity. Had the applicant been careful to live 
within his means? Had he paid his debts when 
he could? Had he contributed to the relief of 
his fellow parishioners aforetime? Had he 
learned to practise some handicraft? Had his 
children been taught at school to work? 

Complaints were naturally made of the strict- 
ness of some of his conditions; hence attached 
to the interrogations were explanations and 
reasons for them, with instructions in behalf 
of the industry and of better management and 
prudence. 

107 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

Thus his work went on, while he was person- 
ally developing agriculture ; personally looking 
after mechanical industries; personally superin- 
tending clubs and organizing charities, with reg- 
ular and personal visitations from house to house 
with advice and counsel, encouraging the people 
in their new habits of industry and thrift. 
Meanwhile the poor people, whom he had found 
in physical destitution and equally poor in social 
life, were year by year realizing their condition 
and raising their standards of living. They were 
even speaking in a different language. Their 
rude patois of Lorraine dialect with its strong 
guttural had given way in all the younger people 
to a pure and correct French, and they could 
write it accurately. The schools were well taught. 
The churches had thoughtful attendants. Good 
roads had taken the places of ways that were 
little more than by-paths. Farmers were no 
longer without suitable tools and implements. 
Their crops were rewarding them. There were 
mechanics capable for all home work and able 
to take apprentices. More than all in this varied, 
anxious, increasing care, the pastor had never 
neglected his study. His pulpit preparation was 
made with scrupulous attention. What he could 
not do by day he did while others slept. This 

io8 



CONSECRATION TO PUBLIC WELFARE 

kind of sacrificial life had now gone on for 
twenty-two years, sixteen of which were shared 
with his most noble and devoted wife. Great 
had been the faith and patience and great the 
toil. Great also had been the achievement until 
now, at the age of forty-nine years, came a new 
and wider experience. 



log 



VIII 
DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



II 



yiii 

DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

(1789-1795) 

WHILE Oberlin was devoting himself 
to the immediate interests under his 
eye, the French Revolution came. 
Louis XV had left to his successor a fierce and 
deadly hatred among the suffering French people 
towards the throne and the privileged orders. 
His scandalous and corrupt misgovernment had 
earned for him the contempt as well as the 
maledictions of his subjects, and had begotten a 
criticism of all existing institutions, political and 
domestic. The agitation was felt even in the 
remote hills of the Vosges. 

Jean Jacques Rousseau, with his specious air 
of philanthropy, was developing his ideas on the 
reconstruction of society with the charm of style 
which was particularly attractive to the French 
people, but which was subtly undermining the 

8 113 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

foundations both of religion and of government. 
The court and privileged orders, given over to 
their corrupt pleasures, were too blind to see the 
signs of the times. 

Louis XVI had come to the throne at the time 
when Oberlin was preparing for his intended 
mission in the New World. Louis XV, his con- 
temptible predecessor, bequeathed to him, not 
only the impending danger, but also left him 
totally uninstructed in the knowledge of govern- 
ment, the affairs of state, and the duties of his 
future station. Under these conditions the spirit 
of lawlessness, which soon manifested itself in 
the cities, became insurrection and spread rapidly 
into the provinces. Peasants declared themselves 
against landed proprietors, and a general abro- 
gation of the ancient feudal constitution and 
rights which had obtained for many centuries 
in France was voted. 

The French Assembly was framing a new 
constitution, which was to abolish privilege and 
sweep away whatever feudalism still existed. The 
^' Declaration of the Rights of Man,'' which at 
this time appealed to the French people and 
which ranks, as Madame de Stael wrote, side 
by side with the '' English Bill of Rights '' and 
the American '^ Declaration," in the times which 

114 



DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

followed became a part of Oberlin's experience 
and history. 

He had all the youth of his parishes commit 
this Declaration of Rights to memory. Every 
week they were to recite it regularly: 

All men are born and continue free and equal in 
rights. Social distinctions are purely conventional. 

Society is an association to preserve the natural 
rights of man. 

Sovereignty resides in the nation. All authority 
vested in an individual or in a body of men comes 
expressly from the nation. 

Liberty is the power of doing what we will, so long 
as it does not injure another; the only limits of each 
man's natural rights are such as to secure the same 
rights to others; these limits are determinable only 
by the law. 

The law can forbid only such actions as are mis- 
chievous to society. " Quod lex non vetat, permittit.'' 

Law is the expression of the general will; all citi- 
zens have equal rights according to their fitness to 
fulfil all offices in the state. 

Accusation, arrest, detention, can only be in ac- 
cordance with the law. 

The law must be reasonable ; it must have no retro- 
active force. 

Every one must be deemed innocent till he has been 
convicted; persons under arrest on suspicion must 
therefore be treated gently. 

All men are free to hold what religious views they 

115 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

will, provided they are not subversive to the public 
order. 

Freedom of speech, of writing and printing, save 
in cases reserved by law, is one of the most precious 
of the rights of man. 

A public force is needed to guarantee the rights of 
man. 

To support such a force, a common contribution is 
necessary, which is to be equally levied on all citizens 
according to their means. 

Society has a right to demand from every public 
servant an account of his administration. 

Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no 
one can be deprived of it save when public necessity, 
legally established, demands it, and then only with 
the conditions of a just and previously determined 
indemnity. 

This certainly was a strong dose of patriotism 
for Oberlin's young people, — young v^omen as 
v^ell as young men. They were the chief prin- 
ciples out of which the Revolution grew. They 
did not contemplate the destruction of the mon- 
archy, but they did mean that it should be limited 
and the people safeguarded. Louis XVI was 
not ready to become a constitutional king, and 
the revolutionary tide rose with a force not to 
be controlled. He had now to deal, not with the 
people, but with the Revolution. In the name 

ii6 



DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

of '' Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity '' the cry 
arose, '' Death to the Tyrant ! Death to him or 
to us ! '^ and it did not cease until the ill-starred 
king went to the guillotine in the Place de la 
Revolution. 

The mountaineers, rejoicing in the downfall of 
feudalism and in the promises of human rights, 
proposed to do their part in welcoming the 
change, and with popular festivities celebrated 
their relief, usually held on one or another of 
the mountain tops. 

Oberlin was patriot as well as prophet. Real- 
izing the hopeless condition of his country if 
the principles of liberty should fail to rest upon 
religion, he sought to hold the mountaineers to 
a true conception of patriotism. He presided 
over their celebrations in order to direct them, 
and to give them the solemn and serious char- 
acter which rightly belonged to them. He was 
sure to be with them, leading them in prayer 
for their distracted country. 

On the 13th of November, 1791, following the 
fete of the Constitution, the people of the district 
came together in the church at Fouday. Oberlin 
handed the mayors of the different villages their 
badges of office, and reminded them that though 
these badges which they were to wear were light 

117 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

burdens, the duties which they represented were 
not Hght. As they had newly come to office, he 
counseled them to keep themselves upright and 
without moral blemish, and lifting his hand 
heavenward, prayed '' that the immense giants 
of the aristocracy might be crushed, that the 
Lord would make his face to shine upon the 
friends of the Constitution, that the people might 
be worthy of the new order of things about to 
be established, and that righteous peace might 
come to France under the scepter of Jesus 
Christ." 

All this time Austria, Prussia, Piedmont, and 
Spain could scarcely keep their hands off this 
French frontier of Alsace. Its people were liv- 
ing under the constant threat of these powers. 
A special pretext for hostilities soon arose out 
of the grievances of certain petty German princes 
whose inherited claims to feudal jurisdiction in 
the Vosges had now been swept away by the 
action of France, and who demanded restitu- 
tion. This led to a declaration of war early in 
1792. 

Responding to a call for volunteers, many 
young men of Oberlin's parishes, encouraged by 
their pastor, enlisted. He assembled them at the 
church and urged them to be good soldiers and 

118 



DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

to carry with them the thought at all times that 
God was their leader and defender. '' If you are 
called to your country's aid in foreign service, 
remember that we are not enemies of the people 
whom we withstand. They are as much to be 
pitied as we are for the tyranny of the princes 
who have brought war upon them and upon us. 
Be therefore compassionate towards every one 
everywhere. Carry the love of God in your 
hearts and in all your thoughts. Obtain through 
constant prayer the power to love men with all 
your hearts, and God will be with you in the 
foreign land and bring you safely back to your 
home. But if any should be called to find his 
grave far from here, if he is where God and 
duty led him, he will be, when called, nearer 
heaven.'' 

Oberlin did not know then that his own son, 
his eldest son, bearing his name, Frederic, a 
youth of much promise, at the time a medical 
student looking forward to the mission of his 
life, would be one of the first to fall in battle. 
For the execution of a specially dangerous serv- 
ice a volunteer was called for; as might have 
been expected from his father's son, he volun- 
teered and gave up his life. 

Events were now moving very swiftly in 

119 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

France. The war which had begun under the 
king was all the more urgent under the Repub- 
lic. The army sent a deputation to the revolu- 
tionary convention in session to thank it '' for 
having reduced them to the necessity of conquer- 
ing/' It was war without now, and a '' Reign 
of Terror '' within. '' If 1789 was the revolution 
of justice, 1793 was the revolution of hatred," 
wrote Jules Simon. It had come to this, a revo- 
lution of hatred, and the far-away hills of the 
Vosges were not too remote to realize their share 
of it. With the government of Robespierre and 
the Jacobins, the religion of Jesus Christ was 
formally proscribed and all Christian worship 
was prohibited. There was to be no God and 
there were to be no churches. During these 
dreadful times almost all men of learning were 
arrested. Pastors saved their lives by flight. 
The brother of Oberlin was in prison. Oberlin 
himself was compelled to close his church and 
his life was in peril, but he determined to re- 
main where he was. His foresight found him 
with a mechanic's license which he had obtained 
a year previous, not knowing then what might 
eventuate. As an artisan, he immediately or- 
ganized a club named '' The People's Society," 
and arranged for a meeting with the club in the 

120 



DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

discontinued churches. A board was selected 
from the people of the villages and the gather- 
ings were held in strict parliamentary form. 
Some motion concerning the public welfare 
would be considered, when the president of the 
club would invite Oberlin to remark upon it. 
This gave him an opportunity to whip Satan 
soundly without calling him by name, and to 
expound the Beatitudes and the teachings of 
'' The Sermon on the Mount '' without directly 
indicating their source and inspiration. He thus 
records his condition : '' I was prohibited all pub- 
lic functions by the revolutionary government, 
and I established a club in the place of divine 
service to enable us to continue our assembly." 
Its formation is thus given : '' When the Na- 
tional Convention passed its decree prohibiting 
public worship and requiring a ' Public Orator ' 
to enforce the principles of liberty and to de- 
nounce the tyrant, a meeting of the people was 
held, a club was formed, and one of the school- 
masters was elected president. He at once pro- 
posed citizen Oberlin as the Public Orator, which 
was carried unanimously. ' Now,' said the Ora- 
tor, ^the next business is to fix a place and a 
day of meeting. It seems to me that there is 
no place in all this district so convenient as that 

121 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

which has been heretofore used for pubHc wor- 
ship/ This was approved. ' As to the day of 
assembly/ continued the Orator, ' we cannot fix 
Monday, Wednesday, or Friday because they are 
market days at Strasburg; what do you think 
of the old Sunday at nine o'clock in the morn- 
ing?' This was carried unanimously. Accord- 
ingly, on the next Sunday, the citizen Orator 
used the pulpit as a tribune, and beginning by 
reading the National Convention Decree, pro- 
ceeded as follows : ' According to this decree, I 
am to exhort you against the tyrants, and we 
are to confer for their destruction. Here in our 
peaceful valley we certainly have no such tyrants 
as the Convention describes, and it would be use- 
less for me to speak about them. But I can 
name and describe to you other tyrants who live 
not only in this valley but in your own houses, 
aye, even in your hearts. These tyrants are 
hatred, avarice, impurity, fleshly lusts, impiety, 
and pride. These are the tyrants I shall de- 
nounce here, and I shall confer with you on the 
best means of bringing them down. I believe 
the best and the only means now and to all 
eternity are repentance towards God and faith 
in the Lord Jesus Christ.' " In this form he met 
the '' Decree." 

122 




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II 



DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Madame de Stein, in her Souvenirs of Alsatiay 
gives some picturesque details of one of these 
club meetings: 

Desiring to be present at one of these, we deter- 
mined to go to Fouday. When we arrived, the people 
were already assembled at the parish church. We 
found the benches all occupied by club men, excise 
officers, and women. Above and all around is a gal- 
lery where the organ was, and the young people were. 
The pulpit was at the right. The service had begun. 
The hymns had already been sung, to our regret. We 
shared the benches. The examination of the boys and 
girls was at that moment on " The Rights of Man," 
which they knew by heart. The girls answered ques- 
tions with gentleness and modesty, but the boys, with 
such martial tones that I felt they would know how to 
defend their rights and be guardians of liberty. It 
reminded me of the chorus of young and old men in 
ancient Greece. 

The President arose, read the minutes of the last 
meeting, and referred to a discourse which one of the 
members had made at a previous meeting — which 
actually was a sermon of Oberlin's — and called upon 
him to finish what he had not then time to say. 
Oberlin, who was in a corner upon the bench, among 
the club members, took off his great cloak and went 
upon the improvised tribune, and in a very natural 
manner led in prayer, such as it is customary to offer 
before divine service. Then followed a most Chris- 
tian sermon, well adapted to his listeners. I admired 

123 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

him, for it took courage to speak so plainly. I was glad 
indeed to hear this good Oberlin. I found united in 
him a holy enthusiasm with a frank and original ex- 
pression which appealed to my heart. Every one knelt 
in prayer, and the women for the most part bowed 
their heads in their hands. 

A subsequent visit at his house by Madame 
de Stein is thus related: 

Brought to speak upon the burning topic of the day 
— the pending Revolution — he thus expressed him- 
self: "All that has happened to us reminds me of 
a Saturday when the cleaning up begins for Sunday. 
The furniture is taken out of the room and everything 
is turned upside down. They dust, they beat ; and the 
disorder is terrible. One finds himself in a cloud of 
dust, so that it is impossible to breathe in the dirty 
place. Many things are broken; legs of chairs come 
off, and the like, but all will be mended — though at 
added expense — and made firm again. Meanwhile 
the parlor is cleansed, and the furniture one thing after 
another restored. Cleanliness and order come out of 
the disorder and are the results of the dreadful up- 
heaval. Sunday comes, and all is fair and shiny. The 
master returns from his absence and finds the place 
better than it was on Friday. 

This was a cheerful way in which to reas- 
sure the good lady. But Oberlin's heart was 
bleeding when he said it. He was bearing the 

124 



DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

loss of his first-born in great sorrow, yet with 
entire submission to God's providence. The 
fearful and awful conditions of the Revolution 
were with him and heavy upon his heart night 
and day. It was his wisdom, however, to talk op- 
timistically to his guest, and it was his firm belief 
that out of the bitter experiences would come 
the " rights of man/' The Abbe Gregoire, a 
Catholic ecclesiastic in France, of much distinc- 
tion, learned about Oberlin's patriotism and en- 
tered into correspondence with him. Oberlin 
fully sympathized with his Catholic brother, who 
rejoiced because he had seen in France " the 
whole infamous race of kings exterminated : they 
have done only harm. I would prefer the ten 
plagues of Egypt to a king." 

This " Society of the People '' attracted the 
attention of the Jacobins. They suspected that 
the Ban-de-la-Roche, and particularly Oberlin's 
house, served as a refuge to those who had fled 
for safety during the ''Terror'' in Paris. Hence, 
the parsonage had several visits of gendarmes 
who were looking for offenders. A handful of 
revolutionary tyrants from Strasburg established 
what they called La Propagande Revohitionnaire 
and in a spirit of impious atrocity began a cir- 
cuit with a traveling guillotine, and put to death 

125 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

whom they pleased. It is said that fifty thou- 
sand Alsatians took refuge in Germany. 

It was at this time that the Marseillaise Hymn 
was born in the home of Baron de Dietrich, then 
mayor of Strasburg and lord of the fief, which 
included the parishes of Oberlin. He was the 
son of Oberlin's special patron and was Ober- 
lin's friend. Rouget de Lisle, a young officer 
of engineers who was wont to relieve the tedi- 
ousness of his garrison life by writing verses 
and the music for them, was a guest of the 
mayor, who said to the company, '' Strasburg 
will soon have a patriotic fete, I am thinking, 
and De Lisle must bring us one of his hymns 
that will carry his ardent feelings to the souls 
of the people.'' De Lisle found his way to his 
lodgings and began to give utterance to his 
thoughts, singing altogether and writing noth- 
ing. In the morning (April 25, 1792) the chant 
of the night returned to him; he wrote down 
the words, made the notes of music, and ran 
to Dietrich's. They called together some friends. 
One of the young ladies played while De Lisle 
sang. The hymn of the nation was found; 
De Lisle named it '' The War Song for the Army 
of the Rhine," and the band of the National Guard 
played it on Sunday, four days later. It was 

126 




DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

received with immense enthusiasm. It flew from 
town to town through all the orchestras, and in 
two months it had reached Marseilles, where the 
clubs adopted it and renamed it after their city. 
It was called '' the liquid fire of the Revolution.'^ 
To Oberlin's great grief the unhappy Dietrich, 
a few months after the notes were first sung in 
his own home, marched to its accompaniment to 
the scaffold, and De Lisle himself only escaped 
death by flight into the hiding-places of the Jura 
mountains. These were the days when Oberlin 
was in great personal peril and when he was 
visited from Strasburg by an official, afterwards 
supposed to be St. Just, who spent the night at 
Oberlin's house. He appears to have satisfied 
himself that the man who had demitted his cleri- 
cal functions and become a mechanic might safely 
be permitted to retain his head. At one time 
Oberlin's house was searched when a refugee 
was within, but who was not discovered, owing 
to the tact and marvelous coolness of Oberlin. 
The officers left him with ample apologies for 
their intrusion, while the suspect was within 
hearing of their regrets for the unnecessary visit. 
The tact and courage of Oberlin in these trying 
times is seen in an address made in I794 to the 
younger members of his flock: 

127 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

" I desire/' he said in his address, '' that the people 
of the French RepubHc should be animated by truly 
republican sentiments. I wish them to understand that 
every individual ought to live for the public good. We 
are republicans when from love to the public we en- 
deavor both by precept to stimulate our children to 
active beneficence and to seek to render them useful 
to others by attending to such pursuits as are likely to 
increase the public prosperity. 

" We are republicans when we endeavor to imbue 
the minds of our children with such knowledge as may 
be likely in mature life to make them useful in the 
station they are called to occupy, and when we teach 
them to love their neighbors as themselves. 

" We are republicans when we preserve our children 
from that self-interested spirit — which at the present 
time seems to have gained more ascendency than ever 
— when so many care only for themselves and labor 
for the public good only as they are compelled to do 
so. Ah, far from us be this infernal spirit, as anti- 
republican as it is anti-Christian." 

He concluded his address by praying for all 
true republicans. The aptitude v^ith which he 
blended his political and religious admonitions 
revealed the man. He escaped the Terrorists by 
proclaiming his republican sentiments, but he 
managed to work in a good deal of sound 
preaching in the way in which he did it. 

He took his chances, however. In due time 

128 



DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

he was summoned to Strasburg for examination. 
His statement before the judges was : '' In my 
instruction I always restricted myself to that 
which would help my brothers and make them 
good patriots, good fathers, zealous republicans, 
faithful and praiseworthy citizens in every cir- 
cumstance. I gave up at a meeting of the 
people a while ago the neckband and cloak which 
I formerly wore. I always disliked these vain 
distinctions. As to royalty, it had to be abol- 
ished, and I began several years ago to inspire 
my hearers with republican sentiments.'' He 
was allowed to continue '' The Society of the 
People.'' But later on the second summons came, 
this time held before the mayor and the munici- 
pal council of Fouday, and Oberlin there signed 
the following declaration : '' I recognize that the 
universality of the citizens of France is a sov- 
ereign authority. I promise to obey and submit 
to the laws of the republic." 

Still, he remained under suspicion. On the 
28th day of July, 1794, while at the house of a 
citizen of Waldbach to celebrate a christening, 
a revolutionary commissioner appeared with an 
order of arrest. The next morning, escorted by 
the officer and also by many of his dismayed 
parishioners, he was walking on his way to 
9 129 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

Valle de Ville. On his arriving at Schlestadt 
en route he was consigned under guard with the 
pastor of Rothau, who was arrested with him, 
to a Httle inn for the night. At the hotel table 
were seated Jacobin functionaries, who took oc- 
casion to pour their contempt upon evangelical 
belief. This was more than Oberlin could stand, 
and called forth from him such vigorous defense 
that it was said the best place for him would 
be the military prison at Besangon. He would 
undoubtedly have arrived there, but at that in- 
stant the startling news came of the fall of 
Robespierre. His head had rolled upon the scaf- 
fold. The '' Reign of Terror '' was over. This 
brought deliverance to thousands in prisons, and 
to Oberlin, who beyond question was on his way 
to one. 

Meanwhile during this period Oberlin was de- 
prived of his usual income, which was meager 
enough at the best. His parishioners made the 
utmost exertions to meet the emergency, agree- 
ing when the Revolution began to make an an- 
nual collection of fourteen hundred francs 
($280). The first year they raised less than 
eleven hundred and fifty ($230), and during the 
remaining time of common distress this was re- 
duced to less than four hundred francs ($80), 

130 



DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

which was his entire yearly revenue, excepting 
his humble personal earnings. The almost total 
failure of the annual supplies left him and his 
household largely dependent upon their own 
labor for the actual necessities of life, and may 
account for a most serious illness which brought 
him to death's door, said to have been '' brought 
on by over-exertion/' His greatest trial was his 
inability to aid others in these hard times, as 
formerly, and during the delirium of his sick- 
ness he was perpetually asking his attendant for 
funds to help him in benevolent plans. From 
this illness his constitution never quite recovered 
its extraordinary vigor. 

After Robespierre's overthrow Oberlin imme- 
diately announced his purpose to receive twelve 
pupils to instruct within his home. He had no 
difficulty in securing these, as the girls who had 
been sent to his mountain schools from distant 
parts had been in great repute as teachers, and 
Oberlin's testimonials were readily accepted as 
surety for sound instruction and gentle manners. 
As soon as it was known that he would take pupils 
for personal instruction, the children of several 
foreigners of distinction were committed to him, 
and he was once more in the receipt of a regular 
income. It was a happy day for him when he 

131 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

was again able to resume his pastorate and gather 
his villagers to their churches for the open and 
unhindered worship of God. 

When he gathered his scattered flock together, 
he declared to them that henceforth he would 
serve them without any fixed salary. Every one 
knew the way to the parsonage and might bring 
his share to whatever amount he pleased and 
at whatever time, and if any should bring noth- 
ing he would not feel hurt; he would consider 
that it was only the inability to contribute. They 
had had a hard time together, and he would not 
add to their burdens. He desired that they should 
contribute in the same manner what they could 
afford for the payment of the schoolmasters, and 
likewise for charitable purposes. It might be '' in 
the form of goods, provisions, or money.'' 

Though he suffered at times for daring thus 
to interpret literally the Scripture, '' Take no 
thought for the morrow,'' as to his personal 
wants, he was enabled to live in his extremely 
frugal way. A sack of flour would be found 
at his door, no one having been seen to bring 
it. Butter, eggs, and fruit would appear when 
it was known that he was to entertain strangers. 
At one time, for example, when he '^ was called 
upon to pay an important bill the next day and 

132 



DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

his purse was entirely empty/' he writes : '' I went 
for my usual walk towards the little forest and 
said in my heart : ' My God, thou knowest my 
trouble and all my needs. Thou wilt not let me 
remain incapable of fulfilling my engagements ! ' 
While returning to the village I met a woman 
who was standing aside. She timidly ap- 
proached me : ' Oh, my dear pastor, can you for- 
give me? Several years ago when I was in 
great trouble you lent me a sum of money which 
I was not able to return when it was due. Here 
it is at last. Forgive my long delay.' '' 

Oberlin now felt that the most trying times 
were over and looked forward to better days. 
For the republic he had high hopes. He did not 
see, and others did not, that the first day of 
Bonaparte meant the last day of the republic. 
This patriot pastor looked for a new country 
and new institutions in place of a single man; 
the development of new sentiments, new man- 
ners, and new life with free institutions. The 
stringent military despotism which followed for 
fourteen years did not, however, affect the local 
work of Oberlin. While the great general was 
campaigning over the continent, triumphing over 
the proudest monarchies of Europe, dethroning 
kings and enthroning members of his family, the 

133 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

Protestant churches were unmolested, and the 
pastor of the hills was left to work out once 
more his quiet but far-reaching mission in peace. 
Little by little his illustration of the '' cleaning 
up '^ was justified, and the political changes on 
the whole proved to be for the betterment of the 
people. Nevertheless, in the disappointment of 
his political expectations he felt more deeply than 
ever that revolutions can effect but little good 
unless the individuals who make up the nation 
themselves become good. He said : '' People 
babble about liberty who are in the worst slavery 
to their passions and selfish desires. The most 
untakable Bastile is that which towers in our 
hearts.'' 



134 



IX 

SUCCEEDING YEARS 



IX 

SUCCEEDING YEARS 

(1795-1826) 

FROM 1789 to 1795 the experiences of 
Oberlin had not only marked him as a 
bold leader, but had as well brought his 
name and work among the mountain peasantry 
into more extended recognition. Attention was 
particularly directed to him from the fact that 
he had remained in his harassed district, stand- 
ing by his parishes when others far less exposed 
to danger had fled over the borders into Ger- 
many; that he had continued his unique leader- 
ship and practically much of his preaching when 
church services were interdicted; that he had 
twice braved the political courts which had tried 
him, and that finally he had been arrested for 
a third trial. This wider knowledge of his quali- 
ties led to renewed overtures for him to leave 
his laborious cares in the hills and take charge 
of a church where cultured life would bring with 

^Z7 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

it superior advantages, greater recognized honor, 
and a satisfactory salary. His answer was the 
same to all : '' No, I will never leave this place. 
It took me ten years to learn every head in this 
parish, making an inventory of the moral, intel- 
lectual, and domestic wants of each.^ I have 
laid my plans for the future. I must have at 
least ten years to carry these into execution, and 
I shall need the ten following to correct their 
faults and vices. God has confided this flock to 
me. Why should I abandon it?'' Thus, at the 
age of fifty-six, with his powers matured and 
in full strength, Oberlin renewed his devotion, 
laboring with the same earnest spirit, in the 
same forms, personally attending to the daily 
details in the material and religious interests of 
the villages. 

His prophetic genius was not exhausted in 
anticipating many of the modern theories of 
both primary and secondary education and their 
methods, the combination of manual and indus- 
trial instruction, the scientific study of agricul- 

^ The book of records may still be seen in the parish house in 
Waldersbach. In it Pastor Oberlin kept an exact and careful state- 
ment of the ancestry, hereditary tendencies, characteristics, and 
deeds of every member of the five villages under his pastoral care. 
No necessary detail was insignificant to him. The interests which 
belonged to the whole, belonged to every part. 

138 



SUCCEEDING YEARS 

ture with lectures and practical experiments, 
but as if it were by intuition he enunciated the 
principles which enter into the sociological ques- 
tions of to-day. 

The churches of his time, narrow in their 
ideas, were consequently restricted in their 
sympathies and in their schemes for the sal- 
vation of man, and were chiefly treating men 
individually as souls that needed to be saved 
and safeguarded; there was little apprehension 
of the obligations and relationships of people 
collectively. 

Oberlin realized, as no other teachers appear 
to have done in that day, that we must deal with 
environment as well as with heredity, and that 
it is well-nigh impossible to save individuals if 
we neglect them in their community conditions. 
He saw as clearly then as we do now that there 
is more in the interdependent relations of organ- 
ized society than the units which compose it; 
that missionary work cannot regard man as an 
individual only, but must have a care for him 
also in his relations to other men, to human life 
in its social conditions ; and that in dealing with 
these facts we must reckon not only with the 
influences of hereditary tendencies and with the 
history of the past into the consequences of which 

139 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

people have entered but also with the environ- 
ments and capabilities of the present; with all 
and with everything that enters into character 
and goes to determine character and conduct. 
Oberlin was a full century in advance of his day 
in this realization of the fact that souls are people 
in their relations to each other and to the whole 
body of which they are members, and that the 
gospel can mean relatively but little to a people 
who by the state of things about them are merely 
existing; that the human soul cannot be ade- 
quately considered apart from its food, its home, 
its work, and its wages. The practical social 
problems which interest the present generation 
were not only in Oberlin's mind, but in his lim- 
ited sphere he worked them out, applying the 
ethics of Christianity as we now understand them. 
He was teaching social regeneration when he was 
teaching the people how to live and how all 
people everywhere ought to live. In this instruc- 
tion also he made his own home a practical social 
settlement, free to all and always open for illus- 
tration and example. One of the rules of his 
" Village Improvement Society,'' another socio- 
logical prophecy, was that '' no lad should be 
received for confirmation without a certificate 
from his parents that he had planted and cared 

140 



SUCCEEDING YEARS 

for two fruit trees in a suitable and designated 
place/' 

Oberlin's alertness in welcoming whatever con- 
tributed to the public good is evinced in the fact 
that in the very year of the formation of the 
British and Foreign Bible Society, in 1804, he 
became its first correspondent and one of its 
most earnest coadjutors. As soon as he heard 
of its incorporation he immediately organized a 
little '' Auxiliary Bible Society " in his own home, 
and the parsonage at Waldbach became the 
principal center of the distribution of the Scrip- 
tures throughout France. Through his son, 
Henry, who had much of the genius and de- 
votion of his father, Oberlin, from this little 
mountain depot, undertook the work of Bible dis- 
tribution in various provinces of the nation. 

The fourteenth report of the British and For- 
eign Bible Society thus refers to this son, his 
work, and his untimely death : '' Your committee 
think it due to the late Rev. Henry Oberlin of 
Waldbach, in Alsatia, to bear testimony to the 
zeal by which he was urged to sacrifice his valu- 
able life in exertions for distributing the Holy 
Scriptures among his countrymen. The imme- 
diate occasion of the death of this young man 
was a cold which he caught in 181 5, while as- 

141 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

sisting to extinguish a fire which had broken out 
in a town in his route, as he was making his 
circuit through the south of France to ascertain 
the condition of the Protestants and the means 
of supplying them with the Holy Scriptures/' 

Through the prominence into which Oberlin 
and his work in Alsatia were brought by the 
exciting events of the Revolution, he had been 
nominated before the fall of Napoleon to receive 
the medal of the '' Legion of Honor/' Later 
this distinction was conferred upon him by the 
royal ordinance of Louis XVHI '' for services 
which he has rendered in his pastorate during 
fifty-three years, employing constant efiforts for 
the amelioration of the people, for zeal in the 
establishment of schools and their methods of 
instruction, and the many branches of industry 
and advancement in agriculture and the improve- 
ment of roads, which have made that district 
flourishing and happy/' 

To those who complimented him on the re- 
ception of this honor he modestly replied : '' The 
king has the kindness to send me the decoration 
of the ' Legion of Honor/ But what have I 
done to deserve it? Who in my situation would 
not have done what I have, and perhaps better ? '' 

In 1818 a report read by Count de Neuf- 

142 



SUCCEEDING YEARS 

chateau before the National Agricultural Society 
of Paris, setting forth at length the improve- 
ments in agriculture introduced by Oberlin, con- 
cluded in these words : " I am happy in being 
able to manifest before you the attachment and 
interest I have for the department of the Vosges, 
in giving you so excellent an opportunity to 
crown in the person of Mr. Oberlin not merely 
a special act, but an entire life consecrated to 
the dissemination, in a district before his arrival 
there almost savage, of the best methods of agri- 
culture and the purest lights of civilization. We 
shall record it in the Memoirs of the Society as 
an admirable example of what the influence of 
an enlightened man can effect for the welfare 
of an entire region. What an instructive and 
interesting history is that of the prodigies ac- 
complished in silence in this almost unknown 
corner of the Vosges! How delightful it is for 
us to know that France possesses in its bosom 
such a miracle of virtue! How consoling it is 
to think that this is not a dream of philanthropy, 
but that these are positive facts, and that im- 
agination can add nothing to reality ! '' As a 
token of its appreciation a gold medal was de- 
creed to him and conveyed with every mark of 
honor. 

143 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

The emperor, Alexander of Russia, added his 
highest appreciation of OberHn's character. An 
officer in the imperial service who had been one 
of Oberlin's pupils in Strasburg, on asking leave 
of absence to visit his old tutor at Waldbach, 
received from the czar this gracious message: 
'' Pastor Oberlin is not unknown to me. I know 
him to be a true minister of the Lord. Tell him 
I love him and revere him.'^ The officer deliv- 
ered this message, and on taking leave of his 
old tutor, Oberlin kissed his hand, saying, '' Give 
that to the emperor, and assure him of my re- 
spect and of my desire that the divine will may 
be fulfilled in him.'' 

The officer reporting this to the emperor said, 
'' Sire, I have a sacred duty to fulfil in oflfering 
you the homage of Pastor Oberlin," and at- 
tempted to kiss his Majesty's hand. The em- 
peror drew it back, saying, '' You know I allow 
no one to kiss my hand, least of all a preacher 
of the gospel ! " The officer replied, '' But I can- 
not retain on my hand the impress of the lips 
of Father Oberlin sent to your Majesty; " where- 
upon the emperor embraced the bearer of the 
message and said, '' That is for Father Oberlin." 
This occurred at Riga in 1819. 

These late honors — for Oberlin was now 

144 



SUCCEEDING YEARS 

eighty years of age — could not have been other 
than pleasing to him, but certainly it would have 
overwhelmed him to know that after a century 
and more had intervened his name would be 
perpetuated anew in one of its most beauti- 
ful modern avenues in his native city — the 
city of Goethe and of Gutenberg — as one of 
its most notable sons, while the then popular 
ministers of the rich churches of his day are 
forgotten. 

We have seen that Oberlin had faith in dreams, 
but the strangest one which could come to him 
would have been that his name would wing its 
way from the remote mountain tops across the 
continent of Europe, span the wide sea into the 
new world which he had once hoped to enter, 
and inscribe itself upon one of the most poten- 
tial of America's institutions of higher learning, 
so many of whose sons, in sympathy with his 
ideas of brotherhood, its obligations and its 
needs, seem to have caught his spirit of noble 
service, and thus to give the college which bears 
his name its special distinction. 

It seemed to those who sought to secure the 
services of Oberlin in a larger sphere that he 
should have listened to some of their attract- 
ive calls when they came to him in the prime 
lo 145 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

of his power and attainments. Though he could 
not reahze what far-away results might flow 
from his fidelity to the trust he had in hand upon 
the isolated hills, he did not feel that his in- 
fluence would be greater if he were preaching 
in a more conspicuous pulpit and to a people less 
dependent upon his personal power. He was not 
one of those who are ever looking for better 
occasions or larger opportunities. What Oberlin 
did emphasize was supreme fidelity to the trusts 
he had. He was sure he had been called of God 
to minister where he was. He was not sure 
that the call to leave was of the same voice. 
Until he had this assurance he would be as im- 
movable as the hills about him. In this his con- 
science was right and his judgment was wise. 
His fidelity is saying to many a self-denying 
minister to-day that wisdom will not judge 
the magnitude of a work by outward appear- 
ance. No one can tell where or how far his 
influence may go, though his work be ever so 
lowly. 

The time came at last when age asserted itself, 
and, when no longer able to minister to his 
scattered parishes, his son-in-law came to Wald- 
bach as his assistant; but the resolute man 
had no thought of yielding to old age except 

146 



SUCCEEDING YEARS 

upon compulsion. He would say to his young 
people about him: '^ Don't grow old. Don't do 
it! You see what has become of the active 
Fritz. Why, he can hardly drag himself along! 
Don't grow old" — and he would add — ''but 
do not think, my dears, that I murmur at 
this. Oh! the good God is wiser than old 
Fritz.'' 

He never lost his sympathy with youth, but 
retained his cheerfulness, his hilarity, his merry 
smile and upright figure as long as he lived. 
" Even to his last days," says his daughter, 
Madame Rauscher, " he could show young men 
how soldiers march : ' Form in line. Left foot 
first. March! Right about,' and so on, drilling 
them with evident pleasure." When after four- 
score years of age it became impossible for him 
to visit the people of his parishes, he kept his 
printing-press busy with his circulars and mes- 
sages, setting up the type and working the press 
with his own hands. Often when inclined to 
rest, his daughter would overhear him chiding 
himself for his unwelcome fatigue : " Ah ! Fritz, 
idling are you? What does this mean?" upon 
which he would rouse himself for the work which 
was engaging him. He kept the parish register 
before him daily, and, as he would read the 

H7 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

names one by one, would pray for them as if 
they were indeed his children. The time came 
at last for which this highly gifted and devoted 
servant of God had waited in earnest expecta- 
tion of his more complete heirship with the 
Master who had won his youthful heart and who 
had been his strength and joy through all the 
years. On the first day of June, 1826, when the 
hills were waking into the glory of the season, 
the soul of Oberlin passed into the new and larger 
life. The tolling of the church bell at Waldbach 
announced to the stricken people of his parishes 
that they had lost the presence and service of 
their greatest earthly friend. 

At his funeral people gathered from far to 
testify to their love and their sense of loss. 
Magistrates and ministers from neighboring 
communities and several Catholic priests in full 
canonicals were mourning at his grave. A final 
farewell which Oberlin himself had written was 
read : '' Thou, O ever dear Parish, God will not 
forget you, nor abandon you. He has thoughts 
of peace and mercy for you. Oh ! that you might 
forget my name to remember only that of Jesus 
Christ whom I have preached. He it is who is 
your pastor. Good-bye, dear friends, I have 
loved you much. ' O my God, may thine eye 

148 



SUCCEEDING YEARS 

ever watch over my dear parishioners, thine ear 
be ever open to hear them, and thy hand be ever 
stretched out to protect them. I commend them 
to thee, and put them in thy arms. Send them 
pastors after thine own heart and never leave 



149 



X 

PERSONALITY AND CHAR- 
ACTERISTICS 



X 

PERSONALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS 

THE attainments which Oberlin laid in his 
generous course of university studies 
proved to be a constant investment for 
usefulness in his pastorate. He retained to old 
age his scholarly tastes and habits. In a certain 
degree of the term, Oberlin was a scholar. The 
diversity of his knowledge, however, is to be re- 
marked, rather than any special mastership in 
particular lines. Intellectual, loving the natural 
sciences, history, and literature, he devoted every 
hour to study which was not demanded by parish 
duties or absorbed by his family. Much of his 
attention was given to the physical sciences and 
their application and uses. He was fond of 
mathematics. He had no special inclination to 
metaphysics, but he kept himself in his reading 
alert to the philosophies of his day. 

As a preacher in the examination of his texts, 
he invariably went to the original tongues, which 

153 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

were his best commentaries. When some one 
inquired of him as to his intellectual preferences, 
with his characteristic modesty he replied, '' Je 
sais un peu de tout, et en tout rien,'' or as he 
once wrote it in Latin, '' In omnibus aliquid, et 
in toto nihil/' Certainly a life like his forbade 
scholarship. 

His writings, mostly local and ephemeral, were 
such as would naturally be struck off in a min- 
istry like his. While his sermons were for the 
most part written, they were adapted to the 
limited education and conditions of his peasant 
people. At the same time they show no lack of 
respect for the ability on their part to receive 
vigorous thought. Many of the sermons have 
marks of the originality which was indicated 
in many ways in his methods of developing 
the people of the district. In his preaching he 
studied colloquial plainness, interspersing his 
teachings with illustrations from every-day life, 
which might seem too familiar had they been 
addressed to a more cultivated audience. In 
general he committed the full text of the dis- 
course scrupulously to memory. 

He was wont to say that he was " deficient in 
memory,'' but certainly he was not lacking in 
that mentality which is the foundation of all 

154 



i 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS 

intellectual operations. He was not one of those 
whose acquisitive powers through a mechanical 
memory are remarkable but who never know 
what to do with what has been acquired. Think- 
ing out his conclusions in his own way, he did 
not burden himself with the forms of others. 

The dominant tone of his discourses was per- 
suasive and tender. This is especially to be noted, 
as he was living in the days when '' the terrors 
of the Lord '^ were common in religious dis- 
course. When, for example, Jonathan Edwards 
in this country was preaching his terrific sermon 
upon the '' sinner in the hands of an angry God," 
Oberlin, who was no philosopher like Edwards, 
showed his prophetic nature in anticipating the 
thought and feeling of Christians a hundred years 
later in the emphasis which he placed on God's 
own definition of himself. As the love of God 
was the inspiration of his life, so it was the cen- 
tral thought in his preaching, and he does not 
appear to have changed the theological sentiments 
of his earlier years in this respect in his later 
experience. 

At the death of his father, after Oberlin had 
been three years a pastor, his old professor, 
Lorenz, said to him : " My dear Oberlin, your 
father's death must pain you greatly — all the 

155 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

more, although he was a perfectly honest man 
— since there is no hope that the gates of heaven 
will open for him; for he was not among those 
who had been regenerated/' 

Oberlin at once replied with much warmth, 
^' Mr. Professor, I feel very easy as to that, for 
I am as sure that my excellent father is in heaven 
as I am that God has promised to all who be- 
lieve in him that he would hear their prayer." 
Stuber, with whom Madame Rauscher, Ober- 
lin's daughter, collaborated in writing his biog- 
raphy, adds, '' The dogma of eternal pain could 
never have been received by the loving soul of 
Oberlin.'' When this doctrine was once pro- 
posed in his presence, as related by an intimate 
friend, he rejected it emphatically, saying, '' If 
God would eternally damn one of his creatures, 
he w^ould cease to be God. He would become 
a devil." ('' Si Dieu pouvait damner eternelle- 
ment une de ses creatures, il cesserait d'etre 
Dieu; il devienderait diable.") It should be 
noted, however, that we have no writing of 
Oberlin's to confirm this. 

At the same time his discourses show that no 
loose views were entertained by him as to the 
nature and certainty of retribution. Numerous 
passages in them speak of the inevitable penal- 

156 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS 

ties of sin and the fearful retributions in a future 
life for those who remain unreconciled to God. 
He knew that the fruitage of sin is not the same 
as that of righteousness. He thoroughly believed 
'' in the judgment to come.'' 

Akin to his sense of the love and grace of 
God was his remarkable catholicity. Stuber calls 
it '' tolerance/' but Oberlin had gone quite be- 
yond tolerating those whose opinions he could 
not accept. Ardent in defending his own con- 
victions and in presenting them to others, he was 
great enough to hold fraternal relations with 
those whose faith was not expressed in his terms 
and whose education had led them to different 
views. 

It was natural at that period for Roman Catho- 
lics and Protestants to maintain their differences 
with much hostility. Their conflicts were recent ; 
their enmities were not concealed. Here again 
the prophet anticipated '' a more excellent way." 
An illustration of this was when a young woman 
.of Schirmeck, a neighboring village, who was a 
Roman Catholic, had married a Protestant of his 
own parish. This relationship was exceptional 
and aroused the animosity of the young husband's 
relatives, especially because by marriage agree- 
ment the children were to be brought up in the 

157 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

religion of the mother. The time came when a 
Httle daughter was to be baptized by the Roman 
CathoHc priest of Schirmeck. The parents were 
to take the road over the mountain for this pur- 
pose, but the enemies of the young husband de- 
termined to prevent this baptism and made plans 
to waylay the couple at a particular point in the 
road, where by intimidation and violence, if neces- 
sary, they would compel them to return. The 
young parents heard of this as they wxre start- 
ing out, and in their trouble went to Oberlin for 
counsel. He immediately offered to accompany 
them for protection. On arriving at the spot in 
the forest where the parties had arranged an 
ambuscade, Oberlin knelt down, and extending 
his hands over the young people exclaimed: 
'' Great God, thou who seest wickedness lying 
in wait and plotting mischief; thou seest inno- 
cence in alarm. Avert the danger, or give thy 
children strength to meet it.'' At this moment 
several men who had concealed themselves in a 
thicket rushed forward with threatening shouts, 
but Oberlin, taking the infant in his arms, ad- 
vanced with coolness which did not conceal his 
indignation, saying, '' Here is the infant which 
has done you so much injury, w^hich disturbs the 
peace of your davs,'' and with this little text of 

158 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS 

a baby in his arms he showed them the wicked- 
ness of their design in such a way that they 
realized it for themselves, and begged pardon 
both of their pastor and the young man. In the 
forest Oberlin led them to a reconciliation, sent 
the married couple to the priest at Schirmeck, 
and returned with the men who had been sur- 
prised by him to the village. When they reached 
it he said, '' My children, remember this day on 
the mountain if you wish that I should forget it.'^ 

To a Roman Catholic who expressed his re- 
gret that they were not of the same religion, his 
reply was : '' If you are a Christian, my dear 
friend, we are of the same religion. Let us fol- 
low the law given by the Saviour; it is the only 
true law; the forms and ceremonies added by 
different sects are of little importance.'^ 

The Catholic prefect of Strasburg was one of 
his intimate friends. Stoeber says : '' They would 
converse on sacred subjects far into the night, 
and often the good prefect left Oberlin's study 
with tears in his eyes, so powerfully had the con- 
ference affected him.'' A Catholic gentleman, 
M. Merlin, asked Oberlin if he believed that 
heathen who lived in charity were saved. '^ I 
have no doubt of it." '' You do not believe, then, 
that Socrates, for example, is doomed to eternal 

159 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

misery?'' ''What!" exclaimed Oberlin with 
warmth, " that good man ! No. I beheve he 
has a seat very near the throne of God/' Meet- 
ing, one day, a CathoHc citizen who told him that 
he had heard of his preaching against the Catho- 
lic religion, Oberlin opened his Bible, and turning 
to the epistles of Peter, James, and John, said, 
'' You see these Catholic Epistles are read by all 
our people; how can I preach against a religion 
that is Catholic?" 

Surrounded by a mixed population of Catholics 
and Protestants, he felt that if he bore the name 
of '' Evangelical Catholic " it would represent the 
fact, and was less likely to prevent his influence 
than to be designated by the narrower name of 
'' Protestant." '' Our faith is not in Luther, but 
in Jesus Christ." 

A portrait of Luther hung in his study. To 
a visitor whose attention was drawn to it he said: 
" Luther was not the founder of a new religion ; 
he only brought us back to the religion of Jesus 
Christ. God will regard all who adhere to the 
doctrines of his divine Son, be they Catholics or 
Lutherans." 

A document was found among his papers con- 
taining a full statement of the '' circumstances 
which determined me to call myself Evangelical 

1 60 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS 

Catholic minister, rather than a minister of the 
Protestant rehgion/' in which he says : '' A young 
CathoHc priest has told some one that if the other 
ministers called Protestants were as truly Catho- 
lic as the minister of Waldbach, he would not 
hesitate to place himself on their side. Thus the 
hatred and repugnance that so long caused us 
sorrows of every kind have little by little given 
place to brotherly love, and our doctrines are seen 
to be those of the true Catholic Church; that is 
to say, Christian ! '' As a fact, Oberlin did suc- 
ceed in reducing the antipathy between Protes- 
tants and Catholics throughout his district, and 
came to be venerated by both priests and people. 

He administered the sacraments to Catholics, 
Lutherans, and Calvinists at the same time, and 
because they would not eat the same bread, he 
had on a plate bread of different kinds, — wafers, 
leavened and unleavened. 

It was a little meeting-house where this oc- 
curred, but it was large enough to welcome John 
Calvin, John Wesley, Luther, and Fenelon to the 
communion table had they appeared, and to place 
them in the same fellowship which they doubt- 
less now enjoy. 

Nevertheless, he faithfully defended his own 
position : '' As to the terms Schismatics and Here- 
" i6i 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

tics, judge ye for yourselves which merits re- 
proach, — we who practise what is contained in 
the CathoHc Epistles and the Gospels, or those 
who will not allow these Scriptures in the hands 
of their parishioners/^ 

The conversation between an English traveler 
who visited Waldbach and the driver of his car- 
riage is given in an English memoir: 

'' You go to see our good pastor, Oberlin ? " said 
the driver. 

" Yes. Do you know him ? '' 

" Oh, yes, I know him very well. I often go to 
hear him preach." 

" But you are a Catholic, are you not ? " 

" Yes, we are all Catholics at Schirmeck, but that 
does not prevent us from going to hear the good pastor 
at Waldbach.'' 

" Do you like his preaching? " 

" Indeed I do ! He often brings tears to our eyes. 
He is a man who tries to serve us in all possible 
ways.'' 

" Tell me what he has done." 

" Done ! Everything that could be done. There 
are so many things! Let me see; first, he made this 
road for us." 

" That is not much to boast of." 

" That may be, but look you, sir, not many years 
ago we could not pass here even with a little carriage 
like this. The pastor planned all this road and worked 

162 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS 

on it himself to encourage others, and that little bridge 
we are coming to, he made that also." 

'' He must be rich to do so many things ! " 

" You may say he is rich, but he is not rich/' 

"How so?" 

" If he kept all he gives away he would be rich, but 
he keeps nothing for himself; he gives away every- 
thing. You will see his house. You will not find it a 
palace." 



Another incident is characteristic of his broad 
sympathies. One day v^hile v^orking in his study 
he heard a great noise in the village. 

Looking out v^here the tumult was, he saw a 
stranger, who proved to be a Jewish pedler whom 
almost the whole population was loading with 
threats and abuse. Oberlin made his way at 
once through the mob while every one was cry- 
ing, "A Jew! A Jew!^^ 

Putting himself beside the persecuted man and 
making himself heard, he reproached the people 
as not worthy of the name of Christians who 
could persecute a poor man for not being one; 
then, placing the package of goods upon his own 
shoulders and taking the man by the hand, he 
led him into the parsonage away from their in- 
sults and made him his guest. 

No one could abhor the teachings of Rousseau 

163 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

or Voltaire with more intensity than OberHn, but 
on a certain occasion, when he had been speaking 
vehemently of them, his friend Stoeber ventured 
to say that Rousseau had denounced certain sins 
against the family on the part of French women 
and that Voltaire had defended victims of 
oppression and cruelty. Oberlin's expression 
changed instantly, and his comment was, '' Ah ! 
les chers ! " He did not think any better of their 
doctrines, but he could appreciate whatever was 
good in their conduct. 

His tendency to abstract and speculative re- 
searches found a fine balance in an uncommon, 
practical cast of mind. While his thoughts per- 
petually traveled towards the unseen and sought 
to get beyond the barriers which separate the 
other world from this one, he never slackened 
his hold of the details of daily interest or duty. 
While he persuaded himself of the certainty of 
continued influence on the part of the spirits of 
the departed upon their loved ones on earth, his 
mind lost no attentiveness to the passing events 
of his little hamlets, nor yet to those of the wider 
world. He used frequently to speak of the con- 
scious and uninterrupted aflfection of his deceased 
wife toward him, and was sure that in his dreams 
and visions of the night she advised him, en- 

164 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS 

couraged him in his work, and gave him most 
positive assurance of the interest of the other 
world in this one. 

When asked how he could distinguish these 
visions and tidings from ordinary dreams, his 
reply was, '' How do you distinguish one color 
from another ? '' His manuscript books abound 
in details of these dreams which he interpreted. 
Naturally his mind inclined to clairvoyance, and 
he took great pleasure in the phenomena of what 
was then called '' animal magnetism." He be- 
came a great friend of his contemporary, the 
Swiss mystic, Lavater, was in frequent and 
familiar correspondence with him, and sympa- 
thized with many of his eccentric views of physi- 
ognomy as a science. 

He thought that he could judge the character 
from the features, and even from the mere out- 
line, from the profile silhouettes, which were then 
common. He made in this study a large collec- 
tion of profiles and taught the children in their 
drawing classes to make them. He also believed 
that he could detect qualities good or bad from 
the preference in colors. 

We are not surprised to find that his interest 
in the reality of the communion which he him- 
self had with his departed wife led him to the 

165 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

study of Swedenborg's works, which had been 
recommended to him by his friend, the German 
mystic and author, Dr. Jung StilHng, an intimate 
friend also of Goethe. He certainly found much 
of suggestiveness in the analogies of Sweden- 
borg and in the correspondences between natural 
and spiritual things. A chart or celestial dia- 
gram of Solomon's Temple as representing the 
kingdom of heaven is still to be seen in the Wald- 
bach parsonage, in which he endeavored to make 
clear the fact that the future life would depend 
upon the character formed in the life of the body, 
the innermost mansions of the temple being of 
those who had been most devoted to the service 
of others. His biographer, Stoeber, remarks upon 
Oberlin's belief in the influence of spirits on 
earthly life, saying: ''We are far from wishing 
to favor superstition, but to say a thing is not 
because we ourselves have not known it ; to deny 
what another has seen himself because we our- 
selves have not seen it; to deny what another 
has seen and felt because we have not seen or 
felt as he has — this does not seem sound reason- 
ing." However we may regard these fancies, 
if we choose to call them such, of this uncommon 
man, in everything that had to do with earthly 
life there was no lack of sound, hard, practical 

i66 . 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS 

common sense. His heavenly visions in no way 
injured his earthly eyesight. His eccentricities, 
if they are so judged, were all on the side of 
righteousness ; and for the comfort of those who 
may think that his spirit of liberality was carried 
to a great length, it may be said that his dis- 
courses give no hint of eccentricities and show 
him to have been as evangelical as the New 
Testament. His standing as a Lutheran pastor 
was never questioned. 

By the side of this characteristic, loving qual- 
ity was his keen sense of justice, which is par- 
ticularly marked by his course in the treatment 
of the French assignats. The heavy expenses of 
the revolutionary government had been met by 
the issue of a small paper currency called assig- 
nats, which from the vast amount and doubtful 
security came to be passed for much less than 
their nominal value. Oberlin felt that the nation 
was dishonest in not keeping its promises, and that 
the scaling down of the notes was, in so far, a 
personal repudiation. He prepared a circular in 
opposition to this depreciation, saying: ''These 
notes are obligations of the nation to which it 
has pledged its faith; to receive them at less 
than their face value is to assail the good faith 
of the nation, and true patriots will not allow 

167 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

themselves to be accomplices in this depreciation/* 
He proved his consistency by receiving, in his 
parishes, the notes to their full value, and recom- 
mended that every one who held one of them 
should submit to a discount of two per cent and 
indorse this on paper in each transaction, so that 
in time the note would be canceled and the debt 
discharged. Among his own papers was found 
one of these notes indorsed in his handwriting, 
'' Thus, thanks to God, my country is honestly 
released from this obligation/' He bought up 
all the assignats which had been brought into 
the Ban-de-la-Roche and made the depreciation 
good. A comment has been made upon this which 
styles it '' a freak of conscience and a curious 
exhibition of patriotism,'' but the protest against 
dishonor in behalf of individual responsibility of 
the citizens was not lost. This sense of patriotic 
justice, however quixotic it seemed to many, was 
recognized in the minutes of the national con- 
vention of France in its '' Sixteenth Fructidor " 
and placed upon its records. During twenty years 
he succeeded in canceling no less a sum than 
78,625 francs, and this in one of the poorest dis- 
tricts of the nation. 

This sensitive ethical sense revealed itself also 
in his testimony against human slavery. He 

168 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS 

would not use sugar in his household, '' for every 
granule of it is tainted with the blood of the 
unhappy slave/' He would not use coffee; no 
article wrung out of involuntary servitude would 
he touch. The substitute was roasted barley, 
which was sweetened with honey. This protest 
against a public iniquity has likewise been criti- 
cized as a useless exhibition of a mistaken con- 
science, in that whatever one man might do on 
the mountains an ocean and a half continent 
away from slavery could not affect the question 
either way. It was not, however, useless testi- 
mony. At a time when devoted ministers of the 
gospel in our own land were diligently estab- 
lishing the divine foundations of the institution 
of slavery by the Scriptures, he was manufac- 
turing moral ozone for the convictions of a people 
not yet born, which got wafted across the sea 
in due season without losing its strength. 

We do not know how he applied his ethics so 
that the same ostracism, with a refreshing incon- 
sistency, failed to include tobacco. The snuff- 
box, which was a great comfort to him, had a 
special dispensation. When, ho^yever, his regard 
for it became overmasterful, the good man re- 
belled, with a harangue which it is to be feared 
had frequent repetition : '' Ah, you wish to com- 

169 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

mand me, to make me a slave! I will show 
you which of us is master and which is to obey. 
Go to prison, my lady,'' upon which he locked 
up and banished to a different floor his too- 
assertive friend, thus making necessary a special 
trip with much inconvenience when the desire 
became urgent. 

One of the happiest days of his life was when 
he had succeeded in putting an end to a litigation 
carried on between the inhabitants of Ban-de-la- 
Roche and the former lords of the district with 
regard to the right of the forest which covered 
a great part of the mountains. The contest began 
before the French Revolution and had survived 
it. Oberlin took every opportunity to induce the 
people to consent to an amicable arrangement, 
even at the expense of a voluntary sacrifice on 
their part of some of their rights, rather than 
prolong a lawsuit which would be ruinous even 
should they finally get the case. During many 
years he had a motto affixed to one of the doors, 
'' O God, have mercy on Steinthal and put an 
end to the lawsuit." 

Sermon followed sermon on the ^^ Duty of 
Peace '' with the purpose to secure the consent 
of the people to a compromise, no easy matter 
to effect with either party. An agreement was 

170 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS 

at last brought about which closed the disputes 
of more than three-quarters of a century. The 
prefect of the lower Rhine was so gratified at 
the result that he suggested to the mayors in 
deputation when the deed was signed, '' The pen 
used should be presented to the pastor, to be 
suspended in his study as a trophy of a victory 
which he had gained over animosities and bad 
passions/' 

Oberlin's conscience went into the minutest 
details of life. Excessively scrupulous as to the 
employment of time, he held himself to strictest 
punctuality in every engagement. He felt it to 
be an almost unpardonable transgression for one 
to demand that he should use his time profitlessly, 
and he carried this so far as to condemn careless 
handwriting. '' What right has a correspondent 
to use my time by compelling me to study out 
what should be plain ? '' He considered that if it 
was a lack of respect for one to present himself 
to another in a negligent or shiftless form, much 
more should the clothing of one's mind be seemly 
in appearance. What he required of others he 
required of himself. 

Not a blot is to be found on his many manu- 
scripts; every word is distinct, clear, neat, and 
legible. Each noun was written with a capi- 

171 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

tal letter, and each word without abbreviation 
had its full value. If this extreme care is to be 
counted among his eccentricities, it was like most 
other marks of his peculiar personality — one 
which it might be useful for many of us to 
imitate. 

In his old age, as his name had become more 
widely known, the natural curiosity of those who 
were interested in him and in his work found 
expression in their letters to him. To one who 
in 1820 asked for his profile and for something 
about himself, he cut one and wrote the follow- 
ing description of his character: 

I am a strange compound of contradictory quali- 
ties. I do not exactly know what I am to make of 
myself. I am intelligent, and yet I am possessed of 
very limited powers. I am more given to tact and 
prudence than most of my colleagues, and yet I am 
very apt to blunder. I am firm and decided, but I can 
yield to others without trouble. I think myself daring 
and actually courageous in necessity, but at the same 
time I am perhaps secretly a coward. I am very frank, 
but also complaisant to men, therefore not absolutely 
sincere. I am both French and German, disposed to 
be noble, generous, obliging, faithful, grateful, and 
affected by the least evidence of kindness, yet I am 
indifferent and careless. 

I am also extremely irritable. They who are kind 

172 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS 

to me have much influence with me, but contradiction 
makes me stubborn, especially in matters of conscience. 
I have a vivid imagination but little memory, properly 
speaking. The histories that I have taken pains to 
impress on my mind remain w^ith me, but dates and 
names of persons I often forget the next day. I am 
so sensitive that often I cannot express the feelings 
which oppress me and pain me. I am always busy 
and industrious ; I also like indolence. I am generally 
quick in resolving and equally so in executing. I 
admire music, painting, and poetry, but have no gifts 
in these arts. Mechanics and natural history are my 
favorite studies. I am a devotee of regularity. I am 
a soldier by instinct, but was more so in feeling before 
my physical strength was weakened. I have always 
striven to be first in danger and to be firm in pain. 
The military discipline pleases me because it forces 
the coward to show courage and the disorderly man to 
be punctual. 

I love humor and have a sarcastic turn of mind, but 
without intentional ill feeling. Since my childhood 
I have aspired to a life higher than that of the world." 

In another paper, writing of his joy in restor- 
ing one w^ho in asphyxia w^as supposed to be dead, 
he said : '' I had need to use all my authority to 
get myself obeyed. I pretended anger, I stamped 
my foot, I shouted like a sailor, I scolded those 
who stood weeping, I threatened to beat every- 
body if they did not keep quiet and help me.'' 

^73 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

If the first person singular seems somewhat 
glorified in these quotations, it may be said that in 
this instance it was not the self-eulogy of a man 
who could be accused of conceit; it was rather 
where a man above eighty years of age, in a 
confiding and ingenuous mood, looked at himself 
and thought aloud what, if he had been an egoist, 
he would not have said. Doubtless every parish- 
ioner would have demurred at almost every ex- 
pression of his demerits, and it is safe to say 
that there was not one who knew him who did 
not think more highly of the pastor than he did 
himself. 

During the time of the '' Terror,'' Augustin 
Perier, brother of the prime minister, Casimir 
Perier, in his capacity of deputy, visited Ban-de- 
la-Roche. In his diary he mentions Oberlin : '' I 
have never yet found a man with a more frank, 
amiable, and friendly manner; his conversation 
is easy, with much color and illustration, but 
always suited to the person to whom he speaks." 

An English writer who met him after he was 
eighty years of age described him : " Oberlin is 
a handsome man of medium height and remark- 
ably dignified appearance. He wears a black hat 
and a long frock-coat adorned with the ribbon 
of ' The Legion of Honor.' His manner is grave 

174 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS 

but extremely affectionate and gentlemanly. His 
courtesy toward his parishioners is constantly 
manifested; he never passes in front of them 
without taking off his hat and saying a few affec- 
tionate words. When he meets children, he takes 
them by the hand and shows his good-will by 
little thoughtful attentions.'' 

Still another visitor adds : '' Oberlin's personal 
manners were admirable. Kind and familiar with 
all his villagers, he preserved a dignity which 
commanded respect, universal and filial. He was 
careful to set an example which should not be 
liable to misconstruction or appear to be opposed 
to his precepts. In this, as in every other matter, 
he was to the last degree scrupulous. On one 
occasion, as together we were walking up a hill, 
he had the arm of his son-in-law, whilst my wife 
was walking by herself unattended. Fearing that 
this might be considered self-indulgent or dis- 
respectful by some of his younger parishioners 
whom he happened to pass (though he was then 
in his eightieth year), he stopped to make apol- 
ogy for his apparent disregard of the law of 
civility. I happened one day, when we were 
driven by a man who seemed to go in a hazard- 
ous manner, to say, 'Take care!' The pastor 
appeared hurt at this admonition, both on my 

175 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

account and that of the driver. He assured me 
that all was safe, and at the end of the drive took 
the greatest pains to prevent any feeling which 
might arise in the mind of his parishioner/' 

Madame de Berckheim, who knew him when 
not so advanced in years, left her record as she 
saw him : ^' A handsome figure ; his bearing erect ; 
his eyes have an expression of marvelous insight. 
In his conversation he shows a lively imagination. 
He has the gift of repartee, the sudden brilliant 
flashes of his mind which charm his entourage. 
His speech is marked by an extraordinary per- 
suasiveness in intonation and choice of expres- 
sion. His way of saying things is unique. The 
nobility of his soul shines in the spirituality of 
his countenance.'^ 

A letter written by an English lady who visited 
his home in 1820, spending some days at the par- 
sonage, gives us an animated description of the 
venerable pastor and his family: 

... a perfect picture of what an old man and a minis- 
ter should be. He received us cordially, and we soon 
felt quite at ease with him. I never knew so well what 
the grace of courtesy was till I saw this remarkable man. 
He treats the poorest people, and even the little chil- 
dren, with affectionate respect. For instance, his kind- 
ness and hospitality to our postilion were quite amus- 

176 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS 

ing. He pulled his hat off when he met him, took 
him by the hand and treated him with really tender 
consideration. He is, I think, more than eighty, one 
of the handsomest old men I ever remember to have 
seen, still vigorous in mind and spirit, delighting in 
his parish, full of fervent charity. He shakes hands 
with the children when he meets them in the streets. 
The effect which such treatment has had in polishing 
these people, uncivilized as they formerly were, is 
quite wonderful. The state of the schools, the chil- 
dren and the poor in general, as much exceeds our 
parish as ours does the most neglected. The meals 
in his home are really amusing: We all sit down to 
the same table, maids and all. At our supper was one 
great dish of pottage, or boiled spinach ; a quantity of 
salad and potatoes, on which they chiefly live, being 
placed in the middle. The luxury of a common Eng- 
lish cottage is not known in Ban-de-la-Roche. We 
breakfast at seven — the family upon potatoes boiled 
with milk and water ; a little coffee is provided for us. 
Everything is in the most primitive style. The poor 
charm me. I have never met with any like them ; so 
much humility, spirituality, and with manners that 
would do honor to a court. 

The letter continues: 

CoLMAR, Friday Evening. 

Our scene is again quite changed ; we have returned 
to the common world; and now I find myself over a 
comfortable fire at a good hotel which is quite a 

177 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

luxury after the primitive fare of the Ban-de-la-Roche, 
where we found but little indulgence for the body, 
though we were treated with genuine hospitality. 

It was indeed plain living and high thinking, 
but these simple forms of life made the man's 
achievements possible. 

Perhaps nothing that pertains to the charac- 
teristics of Oberlin is more illuminating than his 
methods of benevolence. Engrossed as he was 
in his plans for his own villagers, no sooner 
had he heard that missionaries had gone to the 
heathen in foreign lands, than he gave all the 
silver in his house except one silver spoon, which 
afterwards went in the same way. 

To some one who desired to know how he could 
be so poor and yet contribute, not only to the 
necessities of his own fields, but also take in the 
missionary work of foreign lands, he said: 

You ask me for some explanation. I will tell you 
how I manage : I devote three tithes of all I earn, all 
that I receive, and all my revenue of whatever name 
or nature it may be, to the service of God. For this 
purpose I keep three boxes; the first for the first 
tithe, the second for the second, and the third box for 
the third. When I cannot pay ready money all at 
once, I mark how much I owe upon a bit of paper 
which I put into the box ; and when, on the contrary, 

178 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS 

a demand occurs which ought to be defrayed by one 
of the three allotments, and there is not sufficient 
money deposited, I advance the sum and make the box 
my debtor by marking how much it owes me. By this 
means I am always able to assist in any public or char- 
itable undertaking, and as God has himself declared 
that '* it is more blessed to give than to receive," I 
look upon this regular disbursement rather in the 
light of a privilege than a burden. 

The first of the above-mentioned boxes contains a 
deposit for the worship of God. I devote the contents 
of this box to the building and repairing of churches 
and schoolrooms, the support of the teachers for the 
infant schools, and the purchases of Bibles; in short, 
to anything connected with divine worship or the 
extension of our Redeemer's kingdom. 

My parishioners are at liberty to recall from this 
tithe any present that either generosity or the suppo- 
sition that I expected it may have induced them to 
make me. 

The second box contains tithes for useful purposes. 
I employ this for a variety of purposes — for the im- 
provement of roads to the churches and schools, for 
the schoolmasters' salaries, for all works of public 
utility, for expenses incurred among the peasantry of 
the villages. 

The third box contains tithes for the poor. I de- 
vote the contents of this box to the service of the 
poor, to the compensation for their losses, for 
wood, flannel, bread, &c., for those who stand in 
need. 

179 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

He scrupulously adhered to this plan and often 
said that by so doing he abounded '' in wealth/' 

Thus faithful in little things as in large, in the 
dedication of himself to his overmastering pur- 
pose he gathered up his life and economies, his 
studies, his gracious words, his unfailing prayers, 
and his daily deeds into a unity of devotion to 
his Lord and Master and to his fellow men. It 
would have been a poor reward for the passionate 
sacrifices of his threescore years in his earnest 
devotion to others to have secured for himself a 
little more of the common luxuries of life or to 
have considered the comforts which appeal to most 
men. His great purpose filled all his days with 
a boundless joy, poor as he was in the world's 
coin. The apostle who said, '' This one thing I 
do,'' never felt his longing desire for complete 
consecration with deeper sincerity. 



1 80 



XI 

AFTERMATH 



XI 

AFTERMATH 

IT would be a vain attempt to gather up the 
influences of such a Hfe as that of OberHn. 
It is not left to us, however, to be entirely- 
ignorant of some of them. 

The little villages to which he gave almost 
threescore of his earnest years remain as wit- 
nesses to the local permanence of his power after 
the passing of more than a century. 

It is an easy journey by railway from Stras- 
burg to Rothau, the first of the outlying parishes 
of the ancient Ban-de-la-Roche. It now numbers 
eighteen hundred people, a large proportion of 
whom are employed in four factories. One of 
these factories, in which are six hundred opera- 
tives making cotton goods, is under the manage- 
ment of the great-grandson of Oberlin. An ex- 
cellent public school building for a graded course 
of instruction provides for the education of the 
children and youth. A large Catholic church, 

183 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

which stands in the center of the town, called 
together on the Lord's Day a goodly congrega- 
tion of devout worshipers at its services. A 
Protestant church, commodious and tasteful, was 
likewise filled with people of an average higher 
class, and the service in the French language 
was impressive. The discourse of the minister, 
earnest and spiritual, was of a high order, both in 
thought and expression, and was received with 
appreciative attention. 

Life for the most part in Rothau is lowly, but 
is not lacking in comfort and opportunity for ad- 
vancement where the qualities exist for achieve- 
ment. Rothau, though quickened in its life by 
Oberlin's opening to it the hill-country with good 
roads, was not under his immediate ministra- 
tions, and we shall come closer to him in the five 
parishes of the mountains. 

It was in the lovely August weather, when the 
air was balmy with the fragrance of the pine and 
the fir, that we rode among the hills and over 
them, through valleys and meadows, with forget- 
me-nots and bluebells nodding to us from the 
roadsides, while the birds with their songs wel- 
comed us along the way. Crossing the little 
bridge, the ''Pont de la Charite" of Oberlin's con- 
struction, across the Bruche, we came to the very 

184 



AFTERMATH 

ancient village of Fouday. It has quite a modern 
appearance now, chiefly owing to the factory 
which Oberlin introduced, and which is still pros- 
pering. The church — one of his charge — re- 
mains as he left it. In the churchyard is the 
good pastor's grave, tenderly cared for to this 
day by grateful descendants of his former parish- 
ioners. The rudeness of earlier days is gone. 

Leaving Fouday, we ascend to Oberlin's manse, 
snuggled in the little village of Waldersbach, as 
the name is now written. Though the house had 
not changed outwardly since a visit sixteen years 
previous, it was not the same home within. The 
former pastor, whose wife is a granddaughter 
of Oberlin, had removed to another charge, and 
with the departure of the Oberlin family, the 
library and most of the personal possessions of 
Oberlin had been removed. The church records 
of the different parishes and interesting aids to 
local history remain in the parish house. 

Still higher up on the mountain, the home of a 
government forester received us. A little dachs- 
hund barked his greetings, and the good woman 
who presided as host gave us in Alsatian French 
a gracious reception. Forests of pine, fir, beech, 
and birch environed us, while through the clear- 
ings wide stretches of country with fascinating 

185 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

beauty added to the glory of this quaint and quiet 
place. 

It was from this point of departure that our 
excursions were made in the Ban-de-la-Roche as 
seen to-day in the light of its history. 

What did we find? Certainly nothing which 
corresponds to conditions related by Stuber to 
Oberlin, nor those which the young missionary 
soon realized and which burdened his anxious 
heart. In certain respects it made no tax upon 
the imagination to picture the ancestors of the 
people as they were a hundred years ago. The 
clap of the sabots through the village streets was 
the same as greeted the ear of the pastor of old 
time, and for the most part the people in their 
daily work-day garb had not lost their primitive 
appearance. It is a pleasant country still, with 
peasant customs which do not vary greatly from 
one generation to another. A rural people liv- 
ing the simple life, with relatively few wants, 
they yet are in comfort and contentment. Life 
is plain, but the interior of many homes showed 
appreciative cultivation. Excellent prints hung 
on the walls, and precious souvenirs of Oberlin, 
which were the work of his own hand from his 
individual printing-press, in many homes were 
sacredly cherished. For the most part the vil- 

i86 



AFTERMATH 

lagers appeared to be exceptionally intelligent, 
and not a few of them indicated by their refine- 
ment of speech and manner that the influences 
of the past are still active. The peasantry live 
almost entirely by agriculture, the women in 
planting and harvest-time sharing the work with 
the men. It is the impulsion of thrifty industry 
more than want that encourages them to do this. 
The houses are often of two stories, and are 
evidently a great improvement upon those of 
their ancestors. Most of them are thatch-roofed, 
though some have modern roofs of red tile. All 
of them have stoves for their winter season, and 
wood is abundant. There is comfort within when 
the blasts howl without. The winters have not 
changed their severe manners, but the people 
now know how to meet them without fear. In 
the summer-time the country has lost none of the 
picturesqueness which was so attractive to the 
nature-loving Oberlin. Th^ description of the dis- 
trict as he found it, '' wild, rough, and barren,'^ 
does not now answer to its character. The coun- 
try is neither wild nor rough nor barren. The 
countryside has shared in the redemption of the 
people. The hillsides and valleys are rich and 
fertile, the numerous mountain streams which 
have been made useful by the complete system 

187 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

of irrigation which OberHn introduced have 
clothed the landscape with smiling fields and 
pastures. Every available foot of the soil is 
turned to account. All the houses, which are clus- 
tered compactly, have their orchards and their 
flower-beds of asters, gladioluses, goldenrod, and 
hollyhock, though each in small compass. 

In the middle of September the farmers were 
cutting and making their second crop of hay, 
which both in quantity and quality indicated the 
fertility of their hills. 

The little schools were in session, like the New 
England district schools in our sparsely settled 
communities. A visit in Waldersbach to the home 
of the sole survivor of those who had known 
Oberlin personally, introduced us to an aged ma- 
tron of eighty-eight years, as alert in mind as 
ever. Though seventy-six years had passed since 
Oberlin's death, when she was twelve years of 
age, she gave a vivid description of his personal 
appearance and habits when, as a girl, she had 
seen him " nearly every day coming and going." 
'' He was often at our school, superintending it 
personally, and always talked with the children.'' 
The manse or parsonage is now, as it was then, 
the center of the village life. The village library 
is here, and here also assembles the Young Men's 

i88 



AFTERMATH 

Christian Association. On the Lord's Day, as 
guests of the pastor, we attended the church. 
After OberHn's habit, he had early gone on foot 
some miles away upon the mountainside to a 
neighboring village to preach. He returned at 
eleven o'clock as the church bell rang for the 
Waldersbach service, the perspiration standing 
in beads upon his forehead as he came in. Here, 
as in Rothau, the service was in the French lan- 
guage, by a pastor of education and culture. Evi- 
dently the people were receiving, as in the past, 
the ministry of exceptional ability and culture. 
The congregation sang hymns well, as congre- 
gations should. The pastor read the story of 
Daniel, the reading being followed by a second 
hymn, and this by prayer. 

The sermon, from the far-aloft pulpit, typify- 
ing, doubtless, in the distance above the pews, the 
elevation of the sacred office, was as carefully 
prepared as if it were to be preached to a col- 
lege audience, and indicated not only the intellec- 
tual gifts of the preacher but also his appreciative 
sense of the mental qualities of his hearers. The 
subject, for example, '' Daniel in Babylon," was 
in reality a plea for '' the simple life." This 
would appear to have been scarcely needed in 
that locality, and yet there were not many of his 

189 



/I- 



^■^ 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

hearers on that day who failed to demit the usual 
daily costume of the Ban in favor of the modes 
of Paris. There were no sabots in the house of 
the Lord; all had attained unto leather. The 
life of the prophet in the great and brilliant city 
of Babylon was contrasted by the preacher with 
the primitive conditions from which Daniel had 
come. The peculiar temptations of a more com- 
plex and strenuous life in cities were pointed out, 
to the end that his people should rather be con- 
tent with their homes and homely duties than 
to be anxious for those of a more difficult and 
more trying character. 

The service closed with the Lord's Prayer, 
when the church bell was rung for the . people 
who were not present to pause and bow their 
heads in reverence, as in the '' Angelus.'' So on 
every Lord's Day in these mountain hamlets the 
congregations trained in the schools which Ober- 
lin planted are gathered to worship Him whom 
Oberlin brought in his life and preaching to their 
ancestors. 

The influences of Oberlin's missionary life are 
still visible in all the district to which he gave his 
singularly devoted ministry. Generations have 
gone, but the work which abides testifies to the 
wise investment of his powers. 

190 



AFTERMATH 

We are not to look, however, to this Httle local- 
ity for the full justification of this notable serv- 
ice. Especially significant for a missionary in an 
age of individualism is the legacy of his theory 
of social regeneration. His missionary ideas were 
quite at variance with those then current, and, 
though this was a century ago, his applications 
of them, even in that limited sphere, are such as 
appeal, at the present time, to the most thought- 
ful students of social service. We are living when 
attention is directed, with an emphasis that must 
be heard, to the duties and obligations that arise 
in the complex relations of life. We are led to 
the frequent inquiry in the conflicting claims and 
cries of sociological reforms to ask what, after 
all, is the theory of life for man in his com- 
munity relations? Dreamers of all sorts clamor 
in behalf of their visions. A sentimental school, 
dangerous and destructive inasmuch as it pos- 
sesses sufficient truth to appeal to half-truth 
people, vociferously promises a social millennium. 
Truth abused becomes pernicious error. Oberlin 
speaks here, with a voice that has not lost its 
strength, to keep us true to the only principles 
of a social regeneration and a social progress 
which will bear the test of time. The theories 
apprehended and practised by him quite antici- 

191 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

pated modern sociological science in its appeal 
to social conditions and relations. He realized 
with a wonderful prophecy the fact that man is 
more than man; that he has relations to human 
life and its conditions; that he is a brother man 
who has to do with organized community life. 
Because the children and youth would soon be 
the ruling factors in bringing about a better en- 
vironment, Oberlin began the working out of his 
sociological scheme with his well-considered and 
permanent provisions for education as the foun- 
dation of true social science. The industrial fea- 
tures, which included instruction in agriculture 
and the care of trees and fruits with the manual 
training and the teaching of trades, the inter- 
change of varied employments, and the increase 
of the comforts of life, were another step to pro- 
vide a healthy social relationship. Then, by the 
insistence upon good roads, came the opening of 
the channels of commerce, that the people might 
reap the fruits of their new industries. With this 
were the constant lessons in self-government ; the 
principles of liberty as distinct from socialism and 
anarchy; and the teachings of the obligations of 
justice in their corporate relations, that the people 
might remember that they were members one 
of another. Thus Oberlin left on record for us 

192 



1 



AFTERMATH 

his conviction that all hopes for the betterment 
of the social state must rest in a true theory of 
life, that the permanent adjustment of human 
relations, and the only cure for the evils which 
afflict mankind, must be upon the basis of Chris- 
tianity. He saw in his day, as clearly as we can 
see in ours, that the Supreme Teacher of the 
meaning and the duties of life in every relation 
of man to man is the one to whom we must look 
for the principles of ideal society with any surety 
of justice and human rights. Social problems 
that are full of sorrow and pain will find their 
only solution when He who is the chief est person 
in all history has proved his mastery by the in- 
fluences which he has set in motion, and when 
he rules in the hearts and consciences of men. 
So far the world's best civilization, imperfect 
and partial as it may be, is that which bears the 
name of Christ. Oberlin taught that there is a 
Christian doctrine of the family and of its related 
life, as there is a Christian doctrine of marriage ; 
that there is a Christian doctrine of property and 
stewardship; that there is a Christian doctrine 
of industrialism and the relationships of those 
who are engaged in it; that there is a Christian 
principle that reaches every form of social re- 
lation and effort; and that as experiments depart 
13 193 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

from these teachings and principles to meet the 
conditions of society or to reform the ills of life 
arising from its complex relations, they lose the 
strength of truth. Oberlin was right in this a 
hundred years ago. When people apply other 
principles, with whatever sincerity, they become 
foes of order, of human rights and social good. 
If sociology founded upon the teachings of Christ 
is not sufficient to secure the noblest ideals and 
the highest order of social as well as of individual 
life, then no motives or methods which a lesser 
wisdom may devise will be adequate to meet the 
nature and the wants of men. Oberlin insisted 
upon this with emphasis. In an age which has 
developed antagonism and hostilities between 
classes, his legacy to those who will receive it is 
a prophet's wisdom to say that only as the ethics 
of Jesus. Christ are applied to the rectification of 
community wrongs as well as to the regeneration 
of the individual can the conditions be met which 
insure a happy peace and a true social progress. 
The New Testament was sufficiently plain in its 
principles for him, and they appealed to his wis- 
dom and^ sense of righteousness. They taught 
him what he taught others — that man with man 
is a brotherhood which when recognized makes 
for unity of being and unity of aim. He was con- 

194 



AFTERMATH 

stantly saying to his people: '' Think as brethren, 
feel as brethren, and all relations that you owe to 
the community and the community owes to you 
will be adjusted. All enduring social welfare must 
rest in Christian principles and in Christian 
practise/' 

It is true that modern industrialism and the 
complexity of the corporate life of the present 
day were unknown to him. It is also true that 
the conditions which now confront this age did 
not exist when the great Teacher of mankind 
came and lived in the rural obscurity of Galilee 
that men might have life and have it more abun- 
dantly. The principles, however, which he enun- 
ciated and set in motion have proved themselves 
to be the impelling forces of all endeavors that 
have as yet made for human welfare, and are 
the only guaranty for good hopes of its posses- 
sion. Oberlin was but interpreting his Master 
in his theory for life in every relation, that the 
brotherhood of man is the fundamental idea of 
any philosophy of social good that will meet 
and subdue the inhuman conditions which afflict 
society. 

This is Oberlin's lesson to those who will heed 
it. With this faith as the prophet of a new earth 
wherein dwelleth righteousness, he practised the 

195 



JOHN FREDERIC OBERLIN 

eternal principles of social regeneration which 
yet wait for their better comprehension and 
acceptance. 

Though he wrought in obscurity, like his Mas- 
ter, the influence of his spirit and example has 
been taken to many a mission field the world over 
by those whose education in their formative years 
has passed under the traditions and sacred influ- 
ence of his name, which Oberlin College wears, 
honors, and helps to make immortal. 



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